


"We're, Like, the Slayerettes!"

by MyEvilTwin (ProtoNeoRomantic)



Series: Here to Watch Girls [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Action & Romance, Adult/Teen ships, Aftermath of mutual non-con, Angry Sex, Angst and Feels, Arson, Aspect of the demon, Bad Parenting, Caught in the Act, Cheating, Dark Comedy, Demonic Possession, Episode: s01e03 The Witch, Episode: s03e18 Earshot, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Fake Marriage, Firefly References, Fivesome-M/F/F/F/F, Gallows Humor, Health problems, Hospitals, Lies, Minor Character Death, Misunderstandings, Multi, Murder, Mutual Non-Con, Not What It Looks Like, POV Alternating, TV references, Teen Pregnancy, Trust Issues, Villain Ira Rosenberg, Willow takes charge, Yes there will be a sequal, all girls scooby gang?, identity theft, juvenile delenquency, sort of what it looks like, the Slayerettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-27 02:08:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 15
Words: 25,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5029588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/MyEvilTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the second book of this exciting series the (literally) heart-stopping action-romance continues! Follow the adventures of starcrossed lovers Rupert Giles and Willow Rosenberg as they strugle against fate, The Establishment, social conventions, and the Incubus that still possesses his one remaining testicle!  Oh, and Buffy and a lot of other girls are in it too.  Together, they fight crime! ...Or...err...demons anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Name Calling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy: The wooing stage is always fun.  
> Willow: But it's weird. Now, rejection I can handle 'cause of the years of training, but this?  
> ~BtVS 3.14 "Bad Girls"

Willow sat down in the different chair beside the same bed almost ready to burst with excitement. Like always, she waited for the nurse to not be there anymore, smiling nervously. But this time when the nurse left, her smile didn't falter. It widened. It became more genuine. More the smile she really felt. Giles must have felt it too. He looked more quietly happy to see her than ever, less tired than in the days before, even though he'd probably spent a good part of the morning being unhooked and reattached to things because of the move.

Today was the day. The day that it was different. The day that Giles was in a regular room, with regular rules. The kind where they could talk. Finally, finally, here they were at last! Talking!

Not three minute 'We beat the badguy, everything's fine, now get some rest' talking; 'Let me fill you in on every single thing that has happened since you've been in the hospital because we are that close and any minute you might signal me that you are strong enough now and ready to talk about Us-us', talking. 'I'm your friend and even if you're not ready to talk about Us-us, it still feels good to be here and remember that we are at least a regular us' talking. Talking as an act of being an us and maybe even an Us-us, talking!

Willow was so giddy she could have reached down and hugged Giles, kissed him even. But she didn't want to move too fast, to ask too much. He was still so weak. More in the mode of needing to lean than to be leaned on. She didn't wanted to overwhelm him. So she talked. About every single thing in her life and especially the Slayer and the slaying and the saving of the world that she, Willow Rosenberg, had had a hand in, which she wouldn't have if they hadn't become an us.

And then, just like that, like always, like with everybody, she said something wrong. The look on Giles's face was so stricken! It took Willow a moment to figure out what she'd done this time to screw everything up. But then, it was suddenly kind of obvious. As in she should have known better. She had called him 'Giles', which was not an Us-us thing to call someone.

Had she been doing it this whole time? Barreling roughshod over his pain, trampling his already battered heart without even noticing in her eagerness to impress him with what *she'd* done? She probably had. She was a bad girlfriend. She was a bad *friend*. And now—she could see it in his eyes!—she was even making him feel bad for making her feel bad, which was even worse.

“Sorry, Rupert,” she said dropping her eyes. “That's just... what we've all been calling you the last couple of weeks.” It sounded so lame that she caught herself starting to make further excuses. To shift the blame to others. “She's just—Buffy I mean—it's just—” But if there was one thing Rupert Giles did not need to hear about right now, it was how Buffy Summers could barely stand to hear the man she would always see as her (pathetic, non-responsible) abuser—on a bad night 'rapist'—spoken of at all, let alone called by his first name. How she needed to hold him at arms length and for everyone around her to do the same in order to feel mostly safe and sort of okay. How that couldn't help but be a problem when he came home and Buffy had to see them being an Us-us.

Willow laughed nervously and did her best to cover. “It sounds more teachery, anyway, doesn't it?” she offered. Though why that should matter now that he wouldn't be working at the school they no longer went to, she didn't exactly know. It was just something to say, and it showed. Giles (she really couldn't help thinking of him as that now) clearly noticed. But he chose to let it go, as she had hoped.

“Yes,” he agreed miserably, “Perhaps that's better, lest... lest someone suspect...”

“That you're my snuggle bunny?” Willow suggested hopefully, searching his eyes to make certain that this was still true. But the look of... uneasiness on his face left her more in doubt than ever. “You are, though,” she asked worriedly, much more pointedly than she probably should have, putting him on the spot in his condition exactly as she had promised herself she wouldn't do, needing reassurance like oxygen, “Aren't you?”

Against all of Willow's well trained expectations of what happens when a girl asks a guy The Us-us Question straight out like that, a look of peace and comfort spread across Rupert's face. His whole body seemed to relax, his whole being even. “Always,” he murmured serenely, reaching up to brush her face with his fingertips as she leaned anxiously over him.

Willow literally trembled at his touch, all but collapsed in fact. She hadn't even known that she'd come so close, that he could reach her so effortlessly. She had to force back tears. When had she even risen from her chair? It didn't matter. She couldn't speak, she was so overcome with love. That didn't matter either, the not speaking. Rupert spoke for both of them. Their hearts were one.

“Oh Willow!” he cried out in comprehensive passion, made up of everything a human can possibly feel, pulling her into an awkward, standing-and-leaning-down-over-a-bedridden-person-you-probably-should-feel-bad-about-kissing-but-you-don't sort of kiss. “Always!” He repeated, when they paused to breathe, their lips not a millimeter apart. He kissed her deeply once again before adding, punctuated by half a dozen smaller kisses, “For as long as I draw breath, no matter how far apart we may be, no matter what barriers they try to put between us, I'll always be your—”

Giles stopped. Both the kissing and his declarations of love halted abruptly as he seemed to process something that was news to him. “Hang on minute,” he asked when she pulled back to search his eyes for the why-and-how-much of his suddenly not wanting to kiss her anymore, “who's 'we all'?”

“Oh,” Willow replied lightly, all but laughing with relief that he wasn't stopping for some more serious reason, that it was something she could easily explain, getting a bit excited again in fact, eager to tell him more about all the cool things that had happened. “Me, Buffy, and Sheila. Did I forget to tell you about that part! There's just so much!”

But Giles did not look relieved or eager to hear more of her adventures. He looked taken aback, almost comically so. It didn't take Willow long to learn why. “Wait, what?” he stammered. “What about your, your mother? What does she know about all of this?”

For a moment, Willow was pretty puzzled herself. Then she laughed with relief and comprehension again. “Not Mom! God, I wouldn't tell my mom if I had a regular boyfriend, let alone...” Giles made a face, and no wonder! How to label the exact nature of their relationship (especially from a parent's point of view) was another unpleasant subject that didn't exactly need to be brought up right now.

“I meant Sheila Gluzman,” Willow explained instead. “Sheila's just, well... a girl I've known since forever, I mean we were never really... but then she helped us fight the vampires at the Bronze. And she—well when Xander was—” for a moment, just trying to explain about Xander, to think about him even, felt like getting stabbed in the heart, like the world was in danger of going dark. “But well, when I couldn't,” she plowed forward, “Couldn't... you know... she, she helped me run him off...”

Willow took a deep breath and forcefully shook off the shadows of that horrible night, focusing on the night of triumph that had happened at the same time and in the same place instead. As she pulled the two apart in her mind, she found her cheerful, casually enthusiastic tone again. “And now she's helping, well *we're helping* Buffy. It's like... she's the Slayer and we're, like, the Slayerettes!”


	2. The Sapphire Fish Tank Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow: Let's get this straight. I don't understand it, I don't wanna understand it, you have gross emotional problems, and things are not okay between us.  
> ~BtVS 2.14 "Innocence"

Giles blinked. Slayerettes? As in other girls to back up the Slayer. The way a singer might be backed up by her very own all-girl band, if he was understanding the idiom correctly. He wasn't sure quite what to say to that notion. Obviously, if the Council wasn't going to assign proper staff support to this mission—or until they did—someone had to assist the Slayer in her work. That was especially true given that he was in no condition to perform the duties of an active field Watcher. But still, it hardly seemed like a task for a couple of ordinary (or even extraordinary) high school girls. Girls who weren't even Potentials, let alone Slayers. Girls who had only the vaguest idea of what a Slayer actually was.

If such a thought had occurred to Willow; however, she certainly wasn't showing it. “We're using your apartment as our headquarters,” she explained. “Which is great because we couldn't invite a vampire in by accident even if we wanted to. I used your bank account information to order books and supplies and computers and stuff; I knew you wouldn't mind.” Her tone was not the least bit hesitant or ironic. _I now pronounce you man and wife. Mazel Tov._ **Would you shut up, I want to hear this!** Rupert did his best to glower at the unseen presence rather than the girl in front of him, which was a trick at that.

“And we get to do all this amazing, heroic stuff every single night!” Willow went on obliviously, wrapped up in her own excitement once again. “We've already killed six more vampires in just the last two weeks! *And* we stopped a nest of demon eggs from hatching in the back room of The Fish Tank! It's really amazing just to be a part of, of, of.... well, *everything*!”

The Fish Tank. The very mention made Giles exponentially more uneasy. For reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with finances. Nor for that matter with the serious concern for Willow's physical safety that he felt he ought to be expressing right now. If the Slayer or her 'Sayerettes' had had any interaction with any of the regulars there... besides being an unsavory thought in and of itself... what might they have learned about him?

 _Nothing if they don't know who they're hearing about_ , the demon pointed out impatiently. And of course it was right. Seizing on the opportunity, eager to hide his shame, Giles found himself adopting a faintly puzzled demeanor. “The uh 'Fish'? 'Tank'?” He asked, raising an eyebrow, trying to sound as though he'd no idea what sort of a place she was talking about. Doing a damned good job if he did say so himself. _Definitely. One of the best liars I've ever worked with._ **Fuck off.**

“Oh,” Willow explained, “It's just this really rank bar Sheila used to go to. But well... with the whole demon egg thing? Buffy and Sheila ended up burning the place down. Nobody was hurt this time though,” she hastened to add. “I mean, not that Cordelia and Harmony were ever *really* hurt all that bad before, but anyway...” That was taking a generous view of the situation, and Willow seemed to know it. From what she'd told him earlier, it would have been more accurate to say that they had both recovered well and quickly from potentially life-threatening smoke inhalation injuries.

“And no charges filed this time either,” she went on, speaking ever more rapidly, forcefully glossing over the palpable unpleasantness of what had actually happened to the two girls. “They were real careful. Which is good, because after I had to be Buffy's alibi for the school fire? Yeah, I can now officially confirm that perjury is my least favorite sin. I thought I was going to pass out right in the middle of Juvenile Court. And then get rushed to the hospital and... yeeeah, badness, you know? But I didn't and so, so...” A look of utter misery washed over Willow's face again. “Oh Rupert!” she all but groaned, slumping back into the bedside chair, “What are we going to do?”

“Do? About...” _You know what._ And of course, he did. That was the closest she'd come to directly referencing her pregnancy since his 'cardiac arrest', as she and his doctors insisted upon calling it, heart attacks evidently being so last season and no longer cool enough for Southern California.

“Nothing,” Willow mumbled miserably. “Never mind.”

“So...” Giles grasped for glasses that weren't there and then began restraightening the bedclothes in relation to the various tubes and wires that fed into him as he continued to grope for a change of topic. _Coward._ **Not yet alright, just, just...** “So, this, this Sheila?” he said at last, “She, she knows that Buffy is the Slayer and... well, as much as the two of you know about what that entails?”

“Oh yes,” Willow agreed. “And she's been super cool about it. Not that she ever would gossip or whatever. Sheila's a whole different kind of bad than that,” she clarified with something that sounded oddly like both disapproval and admiration. “Buffy says she's the best sparring partner ever because nobody else would be crazy enough to try to kill her just 'cause she tells them to.”

“In deed?” Giles inquired, almost grimly, lips pursed, a bit concerned. Not that he was in much of a position to tell Willow or Buffy what type of company they should keep, but... _Golly, you think not maybe?_ *But* “Does this Sheila have any other, err... bad habits that, as Buffy's Watcher, I ought to know about?”

Willow looked suddenly and acutely uncomfortable. Like a person being asked to divide her loyalties, to betray a friend. _Oh great. More guilt. You're no fun when you're like this._ “Well she smokes,” Willow admitted, and, with that same sneaking admiration again, she added, “ever since the fifth grade. I was lookout for her once. And then like three months later, she tripped Harmony Kendall down a set of steps when she was being mean to me. Which was sort of cool. It was just a few steps. No broken bones or anything. So yeah, we haven't always been close, but we go back.

“When she showed up at the Bronze that night, it was like a total accident. She was just looking for some guy. But, I mean, the *minute* the trouble started she was right there with us, throwing chairs at vampires, helping us clear the building. Everything. No questions asked. And now... with everything that's happened... losing, you know, a couple of people that we've both known for so long.... We've become really close really fast. All three of us. And, I'm telling you, Sheila's a friend. You can trust her. So don't worry. Okay?”

Giles smiled a relenting, half-embarrassed smile. “I'll try not to,” he offered.

“And if you're worried she'll be a bad influence on Buffy,” Willow continued in a reassuring tone, “don't be. So far, it's been more like the other way round.” Giles frowned. There were two ways to take that, and he really hadn't gotten to know this 'Buffy' very well at all in anything other than a sexual sense. But mercifully, Willow's meaning soon became clear.... until it became so clear as to be unmerciful after all.

“In the last two weeks,” she declared, with all the vicarious pride of a true friend, “Sheila's cut back to less than half a pack a day. She's given up pot, switched from soda to milk at lunch, actually comes to school and stays past lunch... oh, and she's quit drinking! Yesterday, I even saw her turn in a homework assignment. I mean, I did most of it for her, but still... But, just—you have no idea what a big deal it is for Sheila to not drink! Because I literally don't think that has happened for three days in a row since the seventh grade.

“I mean, she jokes that, you know, the not drinking is just because nobody but the Fish Tank will believe a fake ID that says her name is Sapphire Martini, but—” Giles must have looked exactly as startled and horrified as he felt, because Willow stopped and stared at him. “Okay,” she half scolded, annoyance unsuccessfully masking worry again, “what's wrong now?” _And after all, doesn't she deserve the truth(?)_ **Sodomite.** _Doesn't hurt if I know you don't mean it._

“Willow,” Giles sighed in a tone of miserable apology and mild correction, “I'm not sure your friend Sheila's recent enthusiasm for... eh, turning over a new leaf can be attributed entirely to Buffy's good influence or even yours. I suspect, in fact, that there is every possibility she may be pregnant.” _And planning to stay that way,_ the demon pointed out gratuitously, smirking. **No really? I thought she just wanted to be in great shape and really clearheaded so she could properly enjoy her abortion(!)**

“Wait, how would you kn—” but even Willow couldn't maintain incomprehension in the face of the acutely sorry look Giles was giving her. “But, but...” Willow shook her head. “She never said anything.”

“Well no, I imagine, not,” Giles pointed out, with a slight chuckle, he thought quite reasonably. “I mean really, I assume you haven't told her about our... situation either, so....” The look Willow was giving him now was not at all sorry and steadily less confused. More angry. “Not that I'm saying it's entirely the same situation,” he hastened to add. “Not by half, but—”

The redhead was unmollified.

“Willow, please don't doubt anything I've said about the depth of my feelings for you, my, my, my love and, and admiration,” Giles found himself begging desperately, feeling the love that he'd just realized his willingness to risk everything from death to deportation for slipping from his grasp. “But, but, well—”

“She does know,” Willow informed him bitterly. “That I'm pregnant. That it's yours. That I love you. That I don't know what to do!” Willow began to wheeze and sob in panic and distress. “Sheila *knows* all that. She has known. All this time! And she hasn't *said* anything!”

_You know, for a couple of geniuses, you're both a little slow on the uptake._ **What the bloody hell are you yammering about now!?!** _Tonight on a very special all-new episode of 'Will They Ever Figure Out the Obvious', things people should realize that other people don't actually know, or: A Tragedy of Errors..._ **Oh Dear God.**

“Willow, she doesn't know...” Giles struggled for precision as well as a calming tone, “the *significance* of any of that. Because I never told 'Sapphire' my real name. I never saw her at school. We—what happened happened at The Fish Tank.”

Willow's chin snapped up, and her eyes popped wide. Surprise quickly gave way to the most profound look of heartbroken disapproval imaginable. “You mean the 'Fish' question mark 'Tank' question mark?” she demanded, mocking his raised eyebrow clumsily but well enough to be understood.

“Yes! Bloody hell!” Giles admitted, turning his face away as if her eyes were scalding him, feeling very much as though they were. “I was trying to deceive you. I thought you knew enough to have a fair idea of the unsavoriness of my activities, and I was ashamed to admit just how deep in this... cesspool I'd been diving! It was bad enough to have to tell you about Buffy.”

“Which you did the minute you knew I was probably going to find out anyway in the course of doing what *you* wanted,” Willow noted incisively, getting to her feet, shaking her head.

“Willow, please!” Giles started to beg again, but he honestly didn't have a clue what to say next. Not that he would have gotten the chance to say it.

“You *jerk*,” Willow said, with calm, definite conviction. “Buffy was right about everything.”

“No,” he replied fiercely, desperately. “Whatever she's speculating about my, my motives or, or.... She's eh whe—It's ju—she's pro-projecting! Because, well because I—because of what ha—what I—” But with Willow looking at him like that, he couldn't give what he had done with Buffy a name. “Willow please! I love you!” he pleaded instead. “And, and I wanted to tell you the whole truth, honestly! I just—”

“You *wanted* to tell me the truth?” Willow echoed, her voice half choked with angry tears. “I'm sorry, but how exactly does that make it okay that you *didn't*? I mean seriously 'I lied because I had something to hide?' That's you're excuse?” Giles opened his mouth to object to her characterization of what he'd just admitted. He tried, working his lips silently, but the most he could force out was something between a grunt and a 'W' sound. He managed two or three of those but nothing better.

The look on Willow's face grew even darker. Shaking her head even more, rapidly swiping at her eyes, she stood and moved quickly towards the door, acting with sudden clarity of purpose. All the same, she turned and paused with her hand on the doorknob. Oh God! Those eyes! Rupert felt like he was about to have another not-a-heart-attack. “Fish Tank s'not in the library, Giles,” she reminded him in a small, regretful voice. And then she was gone.

 


	3. Sisters Under the Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Whitmore: S-E-X. Sex. The sex drive in the human animal is intense.... With all sorts of hormones surging through your bodies, compelling you to action, it's often difficult to remember that there *are* negative consequences to having sex. Would anyone care to offer one such consequence?  
> Willow: How about pregnancy? That would be a major one, right?  
> Mr. Whitmore: Thank you, Ms. Rosenberg! Among  
> teens unwanted pregnancy is the number one negative consequence of sexual activity. So, as discussed last week, I present you with your offspring.  
> ~BtVS 2.12 "Bad Eggs"

“Are you pregnant?” Willow asked bluntly, without preamble.

Sheila smirked defiantly as she stood up from her slouching position by Giles's back door. It was her proud-to-be-bad look, or close to it. But Willow, who knew Sheila, could see that her eyes were narrowed. Watchful. Nervous. Scared. She took an exaggerated drag on her cigarette before dropping it to the ground and grinding it under her heal. “What if I am?” she said. “What makes it your business?”

“Because I'm your friend?” Willow suggested. Sheila's face returned to it's usual, guarded, bulldog-like expression. “Because _I_ told _you_?” Willow ventured, attempting a winning smile. No buy in. “Because we're in the same boat?” Sheila, who knew Willow pretty well too, gave her an even more impatient look and folded her arms. Waiting for the truth. Willow made a slightly melty face and let out a little, involuntary mewling sound of misery, “Because I think maybe it was my boyfriend who got you pregnant?” she admitted apologetically.

At that, Sheila laughed out loud, leaving a very genuine and only slightly cruel smile on her face. “You're so dead if Buffy hears you call him that,” she pointed out breezily. But then she actually came over and sat down at the little wrought iron patio table and continued to act not-hostile as Willow pulled out a chair and joined her. It was still a little weird, this new, inconsistently-but-noticeably friendlier Sheila. “Anyways this guy was no librarian,” she assured Willow so confidently that it made her heart hurt. “This was some spiky-haired biker dude I banged in the stock room at the Fish Tank because he bought me a drink and showed me his wicked tat. You know the jackass actually thought I was a hooker?” she added, with about the same mix of amusement and indignation that Willow would have felt if she'd been mistaken for a middle-schooler or a Kirk/Spock slasher.

Somehow, disturbing as it had been in it's own right, Giles's version of the story had managed to leave that part out. But Sheila's account only got more disturbing from there. “Maybe because I laughed at his dumb jokes,” she mused, half bored with the subject already. “I mean, when I asked him his name, he said it was John Doe Number Two.” Sheila stopped and snickered a little at the memory. “Actually though,” she admitted, “that _is_ pretty funny, considering.”

Willow tried not to physically cringe, as she mumbled, “Sure, I guess.” She tried to appreciate the context, that maybe a girl 'working' a bar frequented by meaner things than had ever walked the streets of Whitechapel was meant to feel relieved and reassured by a good-ole anonymous-john-could-be-a-mass-murderer-but-probsbly isn't joke. But all she could find it in her to say was, “That really _doesn't_ sound like Giles.”

“That's what I'm saying,” Sheila agreed. “Dude was so not a bookworm. Not even that smart either if he doesn't even know what a real hooker looks like. So, anyway,” Sheila confided with a triumphant smirk, “I made him give me fifty bucks just for thinking it.” She seemed oddly confident that the joke had been on Mr. Doe, that his opinion of her had been in no way validated by the fact that the money he'd offered had actually changed hands.

Willow's stomach turned over. It must have showed in her face, too, because Sheila declared, in her I'm-pushing-you-back-because-I'm-rude-not-scared tone, “I'm not sorry either. Not about that, and not about getting knocked-up, so don't start in how it's some big deal decision. You may be worried about wasting your 'potential' or whatever,” she added, jutting out her chin aggressively, “but I don't have any of that.”

Willow frowned, brows knit together, because even though she would never have said anything remotely like that about anybody.... In Sheila's case it was sort of true. Up until the last couple of weeks anyway, unlike Willow, Sheila had not had the sort of life her mom (or anyone) was going to accuse her of throwing away by having a baby, not even if she dropped out of school, which frankly, most people probably expected her to do anyway.

So no, if 'potential' meant people expecting you to do good and important stuff that would make you happy and put food on the table, Sheila really wasn't any worse off in that department than ever. If anything, the opposite was true. It was more like she'd woken up one morning and decided having a future sounded like a much better plan than dying at fifteen and a half after all. That was her reaction to getting pregnant, to start acting like some things actually _did_ matter; even to the point of not only helping to save the world but actually bothering with the follow up.

That truth was startling to Willow, who'd only ever heard of teenagers being diminished by parenthood and _adults_ being enriched by it. And just like that, what she'd always though was obvious suddenly seemed absurdly over simplified, an explanation for a child. The exact same event that was always and entirely a curse as a teen could not possibly become always and entirely a blessing by having a few more birthdays intervene and/or getting married. She thought of a docudrama she'd once seen, about a cancer patient who'd said that being pregnant (at twenty-four, with a husband) had given her a reason to keep fighting. Something to live for.

Willow shivered. Sheila's rep had always been as the scary chick who just didn't care. Nobody had ever thought to ask her if she felt like she had anything in her life worth caring about. For that matter, no one had ever asked Willow who or what she was preparing to go to college for, or what any of the stuff she seemed most likely to succeed at was supposed to mean after she'd done it. If she listened to what she already knew her parents and everyone else would tell her, the only conclusion would be that having the baby was the wrong thing to do, all down side. But suddenly, she felt she had a firmer grasp on what she had known in her gut all along, what it really was that had made this decision difficult. The truth was, even at sixteen, there were heavy things on both sides of the scale, good things to be lost and gained as well bad things to be suffered and avoided either way.

Which was all a lot to think about and process and understand. Especially before saying anything to someone as vulnerable and messed-up and scary as Sheila and then having it turn out to be a wrong or mean or stupid thing to say. Willow sort of wanted to retreat, just to say something like 'congratulations' or 'let me know if you need anything'. The last thing she wanted to do was to take away Sheila's new-found reason for not self destructing, or to make her feel bad or weird about it even. This despite the fact that Willow herself felt pretty weird about both of their pregnancies already. Mostly in a 'What exactly were you supposed to call other mother of your child's sister or brother?' way.

But Giles would be coming home in a few days. And whatever was going to happen, it needed to be talked about without him in the middle of it having another cardiac arrest, or just a heart attack even. So Willow said, “Giles has a tattoo. On his arm. Like a 't' that's holding a snake and a trombone at the same time.” If she had any doubt left, it was soon crushed.

“No way!” Sheila exclaimed, almost as if Willow had just said something cool and interesting in a fun and not at all gut twisting way. It was clear she recognized the description. Willow's heart sank just a little lower than what she'd thought was it's lowest setting. Then, that skeptical look came creeping over Sheila's bulldog face again.

“I still bet it's not the same guy,” she argued aloud with both Willow and herself. “This guy was _maybe_ late thirties,” she explained, knowing that Giles was just a few weeks away from turning forty-five. “And besides,” she added, her eyes glittering with Bad Girl Pride, “You couldn't even handle this guy. He was like... I don't know what he was like... like one of those big dogs, like a Rottweiler maybe, the kind you wanna pet 'cause you know they can rip your throat out but they probably won't, you know?”

Willow made a pained face and shook her head. Because she _didn't_ know. She really really didn't. Willow only wanted to pet nice, friendly dogs. Like big shaggy Collies or Golden Retrievers who would never, ever rip anyone's throat out at all. She didn't know what kind of a person would want to be around that other kind of dog. Except maybe a Sheila. Which Willow definitely wasn't. And maybe she really, really didn't know Rupert Giles at all if Sheila did.

“I wish I had a picture,” she said miserably. There's not one in the whole house, I've looked.”

“I found one,” Buffy said coolly, “tucked inside one of his Diaries from the library. I used it as a bookmark in that big vampire book, to mark the section on Angelus.” Both girls turned to see her standing at the open back door, looking sweaty in her sweats and disapproving in her disapproval. “Way younger,” she admitted, “but definitely him. With an earring and a leather jacket.”

 


	4. The Better Part of Valor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy: I think you're underestimating the amount of pressure a parent can lay on you. If you're not a picture perfect carbon copy they tend to wig.  
> ~BtVS 1.3 "Witch"

Giles was not awakened by the sensation of someone staring at him, so the demon gave him a heads up. _Hey, Rupert, Ira Rosenberg's here._ **“Wha—hmm?”** Giles murmured aloud as he came to his senses. _Ira Rosenberg_ , the incubus repeated pointedly, _the father of the bride._ _He's staring at you. Watching you sleep, and not in a wistfully lusting way either. I don't like the look of his face or his aura. He knows something, or thinks he might. Nothing good._ **“Bloody Hell,”** Giles cursed, just before he'd become sufficiently conscious to realize that Dr. Rosenberg could hear him.

“You're awake,” the doctor noted in a calm, even mellow voice. It was similar to the warm, friendly tone he'd used when they'd first met, but just a hair more synthetic. Which probably meant he was using his professional manors to distance himself from the situation. Not untroubled, just keeping his cool. Giles didn't doubt that the demon had given him an honest assessment. It stood to gain nothing from his mishandling an encounter with Willow's father. And he could tell by now when it was serious and when it was having a laugh at his expense.

“Can I help you, doctor,” Rupert asked as evenly as possible. The effect of his projected calm was somewhat spoiled by the were-recently-state-of-the-art monitors pointing out exactly how much his pulse quickened and how much he slowed his breathing to try to control it. He straightened his nervous little smile when Ira looked back from 'casually' glancing up at the monitors.

“I have friends in this hospital,” Dr. Rosenberg pointed out in a serious-but-still-very-calm voice, less bedside, more clinical. “People saw you.”

Giles took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He resisted the urge to close his eyes and rub his temples. To stall for time. There were only so many ways he could play this and none of them were safe. Procrastinating wouldn't change that. It would only diminish the effectiveness of his least dangerous option. Least dangerous, of course, meaning least honest, most cowardly. _If you confess, I'll murder you. I'm serious._ **Well, I certainly didn't think you were joking. I may die yet from what you've already done, you know.** Ira's patient expression remained constant, but that didn't mean time wasn't passing or that he didn't notice.

“I kissed her,” Giles admitted at last. “It was... impulsive.” Ira frowned at him slightly, like Freud’s more reserved colleague. It was an expression that made him feel all the more judged for not being able to say for certain who was doing the judging. _Oh he's doing it on purpose. This guy's good. He doesn't know for sure if you're lying though. If he did he'd be a lot madder. Just be cool._ Rupert agreed, but none the less he dropped his eyes before adding, “I know my behavior was wrong. I—well and then when I tried to explain that nothing could come of it, I only ended up upsetting her.”

“I meant that people saw you at the Bronze,” Rosenberg clarified, still calm, still serious. “The night you were brought in. Saw you follow those boys out into the parking lot right before they disappeared.” _**Oh, Bugger.**_ “When they realized you were the same person my daughter was coming to see, they thought I ought to know.”

“Ah,” was all Giles could think to say for a moment. “Well,” he sighed lying back against his pillows, both very tired and affecting exhausted near-indifference, “I haven't a clue what happened to those boys. And now I've told you the rest of it. Probably best you know anyhow, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” Ira agreed, his tone finally sharpening just a bit, still passably conversational, “Better that you've already admitted something clearly against your interests. It'll add authenticity to your denials later when Willow turns up pregnant.” Rupert's pulse rate rose so rapidly that the monitor actually made noises of complaint. Ira ignored it. Either because he knew no one was coming or didn't give a shit if they came. They were on his turf, after all. _Keep it cool_ , the incubus reminded him. _He doesn't know for sure if he knows anything yet or not._ _He's still all calm and watchful. Doing the hunter thing._

“I think you'd better leave, doctor,” Giles said finally. “I need my rest, and I haven't the energy to deal with whatever it is you're accusing me of.”

“All right,” Ira said calmly. “If you'd rather talk to the police about all of this, including those two missing kids, that's your choice. But I think you'll find them even less interested than I am in hearing how this is all the fault of vampires and demons. And yes,” he added into the stunned silence, “I do know exactly what there is to know, and I do know 'for sure' that I know it. I'm always calm, that's all.”

Giles didn't even have to say, **who are you and what do you want?** Ira answered, “I'm exactly who I say I am, which makes exactly one of us in this room out of about three and change.” At that the incubus laughed like a child who'd just figured out a riddle. Ira smiled wanly. Giles seemed to be the only one not in on the joke. Until his demon explained, _He's infected with the telepathic aspect of the Thraw'kwat Demon. He'll be able to read everyone's thoughts for a few days, till it eventually drives him mad and kills him._

Giles was shocked, but Ira only shrugged. “It's a thing we do in my family. Ritual purposes. Only the men. No need to worry on that account. My father's been dead a year this past new moon, so it was my turn. Oh, no,” he clarified in response to the other man's mingled horror and consternation that a man with a family to support would do such a thing deliberately, no matter his ritual purposes. “I can last twelve or fifteen years like this and then probably that much more in seclusion. My father was infected for twenty-six years.

“We have a high tolerance for mystical energy of all kinds in my family. And no, I don't get worked up about much of anything. I find it pretty annoying that other people do, actually. It wastes my time and their energy. I do, however, have certain standards, which I am very firm about. Particularly for the good Jewish man that I want to marry my daughter and father my grandchildren not less than nine years and two college degrees from now. So, you see, Watcher, we have a problem.”

Giles could think of nothing to say. Or rather, he couldn't say anything he was thinking, not that it mattered much. His head was reeling. He was having too many thoughts. Too many, and the wrong kind. Thoughts like how useful this man could be if only he could somehow be co-opted, wrapped around and tangled up with how good-right-wrong it felt-smelled-tasted to fuck-finger-eat-be-eaten by Willow. By Willow and the other girls, especially Sheila Gluzman, who was also a child Rosenberg had no doubt know from an infant and whose offspring he wouldn't want sharing genes with his descendants, regardless of whether or not viewing Jewish endogamy with contempt was actually anti-Semitic or Romantic (in a political sense or otherwise) or both.

Thoughts of protecting Willow from being forced to have an abortion against her will seamlessly merged with the hope that Willow's father could make her see sense and want to have an abortion regardless of the fact that that would certainly mean losing her, which was not survivable, not that he wanted to use her pregnancy to make her stay, and all of that subsumed in the fact that he probably couldn't kill Ira without Willow finding out about it and that even if he could have she'd still have been so hurt by it that that plan was a total non-starter, which left him with no idea how to ever be safe again at all rather than at the doctor's mercy, particularly since Ira was right there with him inside his head at that moment, hearing it all.

 _Perfect(!) You want to throw in a line or two about his wife while you're at it?_ **Don't help. He doesn't need to hear me think that she's an even worse parent than he is, especially while I'm still plotting to steal their daughter.** “Sorry,” Giles finally managed to say, rather sheepishly.

“Mostly only that I heard you,” Ira pointed out matter-of-factly, which except for the bit about killing him was a pretty fair assessment. “Don't be,” Rosenberg added, separately answering to that particular part of the 'sorry'. “You'd be a fool not to have considered it at all. I'm in your way, and I mean to stay here. Besides which, I've got you over a barrel and can have you arrested whenever I want. Lucky for you, I have better uses for you than that. And lucky for me, you need a grown-up American friend to get you a cover job and help you stay in the country if the Council pulls their support. Ergo, nobody's getting killed and we can both relax.”

Something clicked. **Dear God, he's a sociopath!** _Are ya just now tunin' in?_ Ira smiled, amused. “Sheila says not, but I think that's just because she's emotionally invested. My Sheila, not your Sheila. Wow, you really aren't with it today, are you?”

If Rosenberg was a sociopath, and one with plans he fit into, that at least explained why the police hadn't been called already. That and the fact that he'd gotten all his information from reading people's minds and didn't actually have a witness to say they'd seen Giles follow Jesse and Xander from the Bronze, though he'd certainly have evidence enough of statutory rape if the right tests were performed, even assuming Willow could consistently deny it in the face of Ira's claim of knowledge, which was doubtful of any young girl who loved/feared/respected her father. But still, why did he want Giles to know so very much of what was going on in his head and why?

“Because I want you to know I'm not going to get attached to you and change my mind, that's why. And I want you to understand that I mean it when I tell you that I'd rather bury one honor student than raise a house full of bastard grandchildren. That and I just get tired of pretending to like people and worry about their issues. It's nice not to have to bother. Freeing. I think I'm going to enjoy not having to give a flying fuck what you think of me while you're doing whatever I tell you to.”

Giles stood a moment trying to master his rage and swallow his horror. Despite a marked physical resemblance, he could hardly connect this Cretin to Willow in any concrete sense. Whatever their legal and biological relationship, Giles no longer thought of Ira as a parent to Willow, but as a villain who held them both at his mercy. Though why the bastard should be so confident in being obeyed as opposed to opposed—“Because you're too smart to get heroic, that's why.” Ira grinned again and, imitating an English accent rather badly, added, “Discretion is the better part of valor, you know.”

 


	5. The Pack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow: You're having an expression.  
> Buffy: I'm not. But if I was, it'd be saying, 'This just isn't like you.'  
> Willow: Not like me to have a boyfriend?  
> Buffy: He's boyfriendly?  
> Willow: I don't understand why you don't want me to have this.   
> ~BtVS 1.8 "I Robot; You Jane"

“It's creepy when she does that,” Sheila complained with casual sullenness, but in a definite undertone, when—at Willow's and Sheila's mutually adamant yet uneasy insistence—Buffy had gone back into the apartment to retrieve the photo of Giles she'd found, leaving the other two girls to await the confirmation of what Willow already knew and Sheila just didn't want to know. “The sneaky listening thing,” Sheila clarified needlessly when Willow was too distracted by her own thoughts to reply to her complaint about Buffy right away.

“I really agree,” Willow admitted with a sigh, just as quietly. What bothered her more; though, was Buffy acting so smug and judge-like at a moment like this. The same way she did about anything to do with Giles. Which, it wasn't like she didn't have REASONS, but still.... Judging someone for what they did while possessed by a demon was one thing, but judging another person for *not* judging them was a little above and beyond. Wasn't it? Especially when you were counting on that exact same person not to judge you for what you'd done while basically enthralled by that same demon *and* not to judge you for judging?

“It's not normal,” Sheila agreed with her agreeing in a way that somehow made Willow feel guilty about Buffy and her REASONS, as if *any* of this could possibly be Willow's fault in any sense at all *unless* you judged her for not judging. Then, with a slightly wistful smile, Sheila added, still thinking about Buffy's sneakiness, still oblivious to the deeper issues of judginess, REASONS, and guilt, “If she was a regular person I'd beat her ass.”

“She's not though,” Willow pointed out uneasily, feeling just a little bit judgey herself after all. Sheila shrugged an acknowledgment that the point was well taken but maybe not dispositive. Willow got the unsettling feeling that, in this merry little band, she was actually the odd woman out in that the idea of physically hurting a live person made her feel more ill than anything else. Like maybe she was the big friendly Collie who hadn't quite noticed the pack of Rottweilers forming up around her, accepting her as one of their number and expecting her to act like it. Or as least to be cool about it.

Scary as they were though, these were all the friends she had, Willow suddenly realized. There was literally no one else alive that she could tell any of the important things that were happening in her life. No one she even wanted to really. Not now that Xander was gone. And in a weird, still hard to fit her brain around, sort of way; they were all becoming more than friends. They were becoming a family. With a Daddy and Mommies and babies and that one weird aunt who doesn't approve of anything or anyone but who still belongs just the same.

Unless she was going to change her mind again, Willow realized. Unless she was going to unthink all her secret heart-not-brain thoughts about little, fuzzy-haired Rupert-or-Willow snuggled to her breast and agree to not get to have that after all. Unless she could unfall from the terrifying precipice of my-heart-wants-the-not-right into the soft green valley of nothing-is-quite-right-anyway-and-my-heart-wants, maybe it was a little too late to try and decide if this was really the pack she wanted to run with.

When Willow saw Buffy seeing Willow seeing Sheila see the photo, there was no denying any of it anymore anyway, no holding on to the slightest doubt. Buffy folded her arms, pressed her lips sternly together, rolled her eyes and shook her head. This all well before Sheila nodded and said, “Yeah, that's the guy.” Uncharacteristically, Sheila dropped her eyes and added, a bit apologetically in Willow's direction, “He was older, I thought thirty something, but yeah. That's him.”

“It's okay,” Willow tried to say, but she could barely choke out the words, “I ju—it's not like—” Willow laid her head down on the table and sobbed, trying all the time not to. She wanted to be a grownup about this, and careful of Sheila's feelings. It wasn't like Giles would have mentioned to her that he had a girlfriend (if he'd even thought he had); and it would have been expecting far too much of the Sheila that Willow knew and called her friend to think she might have asked. The situation just was what it was. That was all. She wasn't doing anyone any good by getting upset, and especially not by crying about it. She always did that. She knew it was a flaw. Weak. Self-indulgent. An imposition on other people.

Besides, she could feel Buffy getting mad at Giles all over again, like he'd been caught doing anything that much different from what they already knew about anyway. And no matter what else she felt, Willow realized, she still felt protective of her sweet, smart, pitiful, helpless Giles. “Do you want me to beat him up?” Sheila offered, not sounding malicious, but not joking either. More like she was offering just to be friendly, trying to be helpful. In fact, she sounded so absurdly willing the Willow couldn't help but sit up and laugh, not so much with amusement as joy, tears still streaming down her face. Because, in this case, it was not even the thought that counted, but the feeling behind it.

Even Buffy laughed a little in relief. She was probably just glad to know that they were all still on Willow's 'side' and not Giles's, but still... Willow reached out an arm in either direction and hugged both her friends, both of her new sisters, or whatever, family members. They both leaned towards her a little just to let her know that they were her friends/family, that they were on her side of anything there was going to be sides of. And knowing that made Willow glad. There were ways, she decided, in which she didn't mind having family that actually would beat the crap out of someone if that was what she really needed to make her feel okay. Family who wouldn't ask what she'd done to make them proud lately. Who wanted to be there even when she was crying. Even when she was messing things up and being more trouble than she was worth.

As for Giles... just because the ladies of the house were all on each other's side didn't mean they had to be against him, even if Buffy didn't know that yet. The truth was, he had brought them all together, one way and another. Their fight was the fight he had shown them. Their secrets were his secrets. Their babies were going to be his babies. Their headquarters was his home, a place literally under his protection from everything from bloodsucking demons to landlords changing the locks or parents wanting to know what was up.

The fact was they needed him. Not just his books and his bank account numbers. All emotional and biological issues aside, even improbably assuming that they could interpret his books just as well as he could; someone had to be there to fill the bank account back up. And even if they could somehow find the money to pay the rent and the light bill, none of them *lived* there, which somebody had to do. Not to mention the fact that eventually there would be things they couldn't buy, information they couldn't get, interactions to be had with authority. To run a secret, nightly war against the forces of evil, they were going to need at least one dependable grownup. And, practically speaking, Giles was it. 

Who else were they going to trust? Their parents? If Willow had tried to explain any of this to her parents they would just have patted her on the head and assumed it was some game they didn't understand. Or they'd think she was acting out and put her in therapy or something. And they were really the best of the lot as far as she could tell. Buffy apparently only had an every-other-weekend-if-I-feel-like-it dad and a mom who worked seven days a week and couldn't handle anything else right now. Meanwhile Sheila's grandma had all she could manage keeping the drunk son and crackhead daughter she'd already raised out of the house and away from the four grandkids she wasn't raising much better.

Ergo, whoever learned to like it and whoever had to lump it, Giles was coming home to stay. He was one of the pack.

 


	6. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy: Mm! Academic probation's not so funny today, huh, Giles?  
> Wesley: The way you've handled this assignment is  
> something of an embarrassment to the council.  
> Giles: If you want to criticize my methods, fine. But you can keep your snide remarks to yourself. And while you're at it, don't criticize my methods.... I can assure you that Buffy is both dedicated and industrious, and I am in complete control of my Slayer.  
> ~ BtVS 3.7 "Revelations" & 3.14 "Bad Girls"

“Yes, quite right. Everything is completely under control. The apocalypse was handily averted by the new Slayer and my er... slight... uhm... demonic... possession... issue is erm, well, completely resolved.” Giles clutched the phone and waited tensely, hoping he sounded a lot more natural on the other side of the Atlantic than he did in his own ears. The memory of his voice was hard, bright and insistent, too full of forced cheerfulness. _Meh, it's passable, but you need to get it together a little more. They're already bound to be suspicious._ **Do you mind? I'm having enough trouble organizing my thoughts as it is!**

“Haven't heard a peep out of the vile fiend since my unfortunate, or erm I suppose fortunate, er surgery,” he added even more brightly when he couldn't stand the silence on the line one nanosecond longer. Deep down, he knew the demon was right. He _was_ overselling, at least a bit, but he really couldn't help it. Maybe because some small part of him wanted to be founded out, wanted the Council to extract him from this intolerable situation. _No, really? You think?_ **Oh, do shut up.**

“And what about those two female students?” Quentin prompted finally, “Ms. Rosenberg and Ms. Chase.”

“Well...” Giles lied, feeling ridiculously transparent, “I've broken things off with Willow—er that is to say, Ms. Rosenberg—and I think she took it reasonably well, well, considering. As for Ms. Chase, she seems to have put the matter behind her entirely. And, well, as neither of them goes to school with Buffy any longer....” _You know they're going to check up on you eventually, right. They're going to figure out you lied._ **Yes, but that's eventually. Willow will be eighteen in twenty-two months. The longer we can stall them, the closer we are to being able to disappear together without anyone else having a say in it.** “So, really, I don't think that will be a problem any longer.”

“Perhaps not,” Travers allowed more than a little skeptically, “but then, that does leave the matter of your visible employment unresolved.”

“Not at all,” Giles assured him. “I've already been offered a position with the County Building Commission as a Preservation Consultant to the Planning and Zoning Board. Which incidentally, will afford me both the first look at any of the ancient relics and prehistorical sites of dubiously human habitation that tend to be unearthed regularly around here and an excellent excuse to spend hours a day in my office pouring over ancient tomes potentially related to the same.”

Travers, Giles guiltily noted had shifted from skeptical to impressed when he asked, “Really? How the Devil did you manage that?”

“A erm friend, well, one of the doctors here at the hospital really, is reasonably well connected, it seems in uhm, in local government circles and, well, the school board may have taken an interest as well.... But at any rate, he suggested it as something I could work into part-time as I'm getting back on my feet, the presumption evidently being that the high school will be reopening in a year or so and evidently they want to make sure I'll be available to reclaim my position in the library. It seems, you see,” Giles continued, something between nervously and dryly amused, “that they've had rather a bit of trouble with librarians dying and or going mad before they've gotten a good year's work out of them.” He forced a small laugh, “I can't imagine why.”

“Yes... well,” Quentin replied, just a slight hint of very grim amusement in his own voice. “Do be careful Rupert.”

“Oh, certainly!” Giles assured him, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. _A bit!?! If this were an operetta you'd have burst into song just now!_ **Oh, stuff it. He's bought it. Why shouldn't I be relieved?** _Because your pregnant girlfriend is living with a cold-blooded psychopath who has us by the one ball we've got left and you can't even warn her without putting her in even more danger, not that she'd believe you over him anyway?_

“Rupert?” Travers doubled back, rather than making his parting pleasantries, “You know, now I think of it, it wouldn't hurt for you you have a little assistance, at least until you get back on your feet. Robson should be able to keep an eye on Cleveland by himself for a bit longer. I'm going to send you that new Watcher I meant to have him train up, Lydia Chalmers.” **Oh Damn.** _And it's not even like you can say you don't need the help, because you complained that you did need it three weeks *before* you had your heart attack._ **Before you nearly killed me, you mean?** _Yeah that._ **Shut up and let me concentrate so I'll at least know what's coming.** _Hey, you're the one talking._ **Shut up!!!**

“...and if this 'Master' is indeed the same one DuLac wrote of,” Travers was saying, “which the presence of three of his better known minions (Luke, Darla, and Angelus) would seem to indicate... well then, Lydia is somewhat familiar with the lineage as her original research has tended to focus on William the Bloody, who is, after all, an estranged member of their kindred.”

“Is he indeed?” Giles managed nervously when it seemed some reaction was expected. At least his nervous reaction was not, in itself, suspicious. Not considering the fearsomeness of the personage who had just been mentioned in connection with the already formidable vampire foes the new Slayer had to face here in Sunnydale.

The conversation continued in the same vein for some time, but Giles could hardly maintain sufficient focus to make attentive noises at appropriate intervals. The disaster that his life already was continued to become more cataclysmic by the moment. _Why? This Lydia a homely girl?_ **She's coming to spy and report on us, you berk!** _No, really(?)_ **This is no time for your... your witticisms! I need to concentrate or, or—** But it was too late already. “I beg your pardon?” Travers asked, sounding both puzzled and slightly affronted.

“I'm sorry,” Giles apologized, coming partially clean. “I'm afraid I've lost the thread of the conversation a bit.”

“Well, I should say so,” Quentin reproved him calmly, with ever so much dignity, “I just asked if your attending physician felt you were still in any peril of death or in need of any further surgical intervention, and you said 'Mmm yes, quite right!'”

“Oh dear,” Giles replied worriedly and still more apologetically. “Well, I'm afraid I'm taking rather a lot of medication just now. My head is a bit foggy, I suppose. I had thought I was keeping up well enough but—” (He exaggerated but did not have to fake a yawn.) “—perhaps we had better speak again in a day or two when I'm a bit better rested. In the meantime, you needn't worry about my shuffling off this mortal coil just yet. I'm told that if I keep improving as I have been, I'll be out of hospital inside of two weeks.”

With that, at last, Quentin seemed satisfied. Two dozen collegial words later, Giles replace the telephone receiver in it's cradle and fell back against the bed, exhausted, proximally relieved, and distally worried. Glad as he was that his conversation with Travers had ended so successfully, Giles couldn't escape the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach at the thought of Lydia's arrival.

That she would almost certainly find him out as a fraud in all that he had said to Quentin just now was horror enough. But worse still was the realization that in doing so she would inevitably become a threat to Ira Rosenberg. Who had other uses in mind for him. And who would do anything to regain control of a situation that was, by the moment, increasingly out of control. The last thing Giles needed was to be responsible for yet another innocent young woman being thrown into the path of the evil doctor's as yet unknown but no-doubt malevolent scheme.

That was it. Something twisted sickly and snapped painfully into place in Rupert's mind. The only logical solution. He could not afford to put Lydia, Willow, Buffy or Sheila in danger by setting them at cross purposes to Dr. Rosenberg. He could not confide in them nor ask for their assistance to free himself from his enemy's grasp.

Instead, he must co-opt them, manipulate them, control their actions even as he was himself controlled so that (at least in the short and medium term) they were not a hindrance but a possible asset to Dr. Rosenberg. If he could do that, then for the time being, he could keep them safe and perhaps, when the time was right, use his ability to turn them against Rosenberg (by revealing all he would by then know of the man's plans) as leverage to gain the upper hand.

Of course, as soon as they found themselves in the same room again, Ira Rosenberge would be able to probe inside Rupert's mind and know exactly how he hoped to eventually turn the tables. But most likely he wouldn't feel the need to do anything about it right away. The arrogant bastard was so sure that he held all the cards, pulled all the strings, that he'd probably be amused to find that his faithful slave and deadly enemy was plotting against him right under his very nose. Harboring the delusion that he could regain control from such a master manipulator as himself.

And that very arrogance, that very certainty, would be his downfall. Rupert would be ready. Waiting for an opportunity to present itself. _Man, from what I've seen, if it's a battle of wits and wills, my money's on you! No contest! Even I can barely hold my own when you really put your foot down._ **Well now that is delusional. Don't let's get just as cocky as he is. This is by no means a brilliant and inevitably winning strategy. It's just the only one we have left. It's not even a strategy really. It's a holding pattern. It's keeping a lid on things and hoping that a strategy comes along.** _Well then_ , the demon opined cheerfully, _as soon as your luck changes completely, then it's like you said: Everything's under control._


	7. If My Heart Had Windows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles: You listen to me! A vampire isn't a person at all. It may have the movements, the memories, even the personality of the person that it took over, but it's still a demon at the core, there is no halfway. You have to remember that when you see him, you're not looking at your friend. You're looking at the thing that killed him.
> 
> ~BtVS 1.2 "The Harvest", 1.7 "Angel".

That night he came again. Willow could hear him moving around on the balcony. Just a little. More fidgeting than anything. Restlessly. Not knocking. Not insisting. Just waiting. She tried not to even look out. This time she really tried. Harder than ever. But it was harder than ever. It got harder each and every night. So far, she hadn't resisted looking out. But at least she had never let him in either. That would be a serious mistake.

  
Willow turned the music up even louder. This would be the night. The night she would ignore him and he would go away. But it was kind of hard not to think of him when she was listening to this particular mix tape. The one he'd asked his mom to give her in his maddeningly ambiguous is-he-running-away-or-is-this-a-suicide note. The one that had both of his parents so tied in knots that Jessica did nothing but sit and cry all day while Tony looked for the answer in the bottom of a bottle.

  
Under the circumstances, Willow could hardly have refused the gift that Jessica had tearfully tendered to her with trembling hands. At least it wasn't anything new. Or maybe that was the worst of it. Xander, her Xander, had made it months ago, had scrawled across the white stickered on label in black magic marker: 'COUNTRY MUSIC (the music of pain)'. Well, it certainly was that, Willow decided.

  
If it hadn't been, maybe she could have turned it off, could have stopped listening to it over and over every night. If it wasn't for the fact that this, of all things, he had wanted her to have. Not her Xander, of course. But kind of... or at least... what was left of him. Remains. Somehow that term had never seemed more fitting. And what was it that remained? How much of her friend was really left? How much Xander was still in there?

  
Giles had said there was next to nothing left. Nothing human anyway. Nothing feeling. Nothing real. But he had also said that all of Xander's memories would still be in there. Everything they had ever been through together was still a part of his experience, still played a role in shaping who he was and how he saw the world. That didn't seem like nothing or anywhere near. It seemed like a hell of a lot, in fact. But there was no love there, Giles had assured her. Nothing to love with. No soul.

  
Still, the memory of a feeling always carried some of the feeling with it, didn't it? And this Xander still thought like her Xander, at least a little. At least enough to know that, even though Patsy Cline and George Jones were not Willow's all-time favorites, not the music she wanted to dance to on a Saturday night full of hope and joy; somehow, they would both sooth and sharpen her pain. It was music to mourn to. For Xander. The love of him. The loss of him. And hard as she tried to talk some sense into herself, Willow couldn't shake the feeling that, while she mourned; out on her balcony, what remained was mourning that loss just the same.

  
In spite of herself, knowing it definitely would hurt, Willow parted the drapes just a little and peeped through. He stood there the same as always, looking pale and serious as he never had in life. Looking sad. Lonely. Pitiful. Pitiable. But in an endearing and somehow not quite pathetic way.

  
'But he's a monster,' Willow silently chided herself. A killer. After he gave up standing on her balcony looking sad, in the wee hours between midnight and dawn, as she finally slept, he would go out and kill again. He would kill and he would feed. You might as well feel sorry for Hannibal Lector. Sorry enough to let him out. Which would have still been safer than letting Xander in.

  
Still. It wasn't as though, in this case, the glass separating them really meant anything one way or the other. Open or closed, he could never come in uninvited.

  
Willow's heart thumped wildly. She knew she was on dangerous ground. The proverbial slippery slope. Right over the yawning pit of hell. And yet, she did something she had up to now resisted every night. Willow pulled the cord and opened the drapes wide.

  
Xander smiled almost shyly. Hopefully. Still, she didn't open her window. Not yet.

  
They stared are each other with eyes full of patient, restrained sorrow. Helpless in the thrall of feelings so deep and complex they were difficult to name, Willow walked closer to the glass until her nose was all but touching it, until she could feel the cool of the night bleeding through into the warmth of her room. Outside on the balcony, Xander did the same. Silently, without the need of any word or signal, they each pressed a palm against the glass, hands a quarter inch from touching. Willow knew he could feel her warmth just as she could feel his lack.

  
“I'm sorry,” she whispered, eyes shining with tears.

  
Xander heard. Nodded. Understood. Sympathized. Willow was sure of it. She could see it in his eyes. The longing. The regret. The concern.

  
Still, she did not open her window. She did not let him in. Not yet.

  
“Goodbye, Xander,” she sighed even more quietly, even more sadly. Xander paused, tilted his head to one side, as if he were examining her words of parting, trying to understand what she meant. Then a bear flicker of a smile twitched sadly at the edges of his mouth.

  
Looking more miserable than ever, but also firmer, stronger, more resolved; Xander nodded once. Solemnly. Definitely. Stoically. “Goodbye,” he answered, or maybe just mouthed silently. Either way, that was all he had to say. There would be no waiting around for hours this night. The vampire turned, stepped nonchalantly up and over the balcony railing, and was gone.

  
Willow knew she ought to feel relieved. She tried. But the ache in her chest felt anything but. Xander was gone. And for the first time since he'd first come to her window, three nights after the battle of the Bronze, Willow was no longer sure that he would return. And no longer quite so sure that she didn't want him to.

  
Pulling the drapes, needing the dark, she lay on her bed, curled on her side, and wept loudly, brokenly, not caring who heard. She felt as if she had lost Xander all over again. She knew her courage was failing, knew that if he did return to her another night she might not have the strength to send him away again. She should call Buffy, Willow realized, tell her about his nightly visitations. Make plans to put a stop to them, to put Xander's body and hopefully his soul to rest at last.

  
But Willow didn't reach for her phone. Didn't make that call. Not yet. The kind of 'not yet' that longed to last forever.


	8. Dreams Are Meaningful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel: You have to know what to see.  
> ~BtVS 2.14 "Innocence"

“At last,” Ira said, in restrained celebration of patience rewarded. “I was beginning to think you might sleep all day.”

“You again,” Giles sighed, opening his eyes to stare at the ceiling, not bothering to raise his head.

“I left you alone for more than a week,” Ira pointed out calmly. “I notice my daughter has also,” he added, grimly amused. “Of course, that could be because you've told the staff that you don't want any visitors. Or it could be that letter you wrote her. She's been crying her self to sleep even harder than usual since you dropped that bomb shell on her. I have to say I'm impressed. I didn't think you had the stomach for it.”

“You've told me the problem as you see it,” Giles replied stiffly. “I'm doing my level best to solve it. Without any births or burials. I can stomach whatever I have to to keep her from any worse harm than she will inevitably experience living with you, even if that means keeping her away from me, at least for the time being. And don't bother needling me about the pain she's in either, because as far as I'm concerned, you are primarily responsible for that at this point. She wouldn't be suffering nearly this much if I could afford to support her in making the best choice for herself regardless of anyone else's opinion. And the fact that I can't is entirely down to you.”

“Well it's still not enough,” Dr. Rosenberg informed him grimly. “She won't die from a broken heart, and she's still ghost surfing child-development sites and lurking in the teen mom chat rooms. This morning she was thinking about names again. And whether an epidural is more wrong than birth pangs are scary. And, you know, I've just realized, you knew this would happen all along!”

“Yes,” Giles answered with a wan smile. It was his turn to be amused for once, in spite of his suffering. “Who would have ever guessed that telling a strong willed young woman that she must see reason and follow the only sensible course of action would only increase her determination to do as she sees fit?”

“I'm going to have to start reading you more often.” Dr. Rosenberg noted thoughtfully. “And you are going to have to do a better job of getting me what I want. This 'baby' business has gotten completely out of hand. There's more to it than just defiance, too. You know what it is: it's that other whore of yours, Sheila. She's half the problem. They've got some sort of Solidarity between them. Like they're workout buddies or in a suicide pact or something.”

“Mmm, yes,” Giles replied scornfully, feeling his temper rising, “I believe it's a little something called friendship. I wouldn't expect you to understand.”

“Huh. This is one time I don't think you get to play the 'normal' card against me,” Rosenberg pointed out, clearly amused again, feeling more in control now that he knew he was getting the other man's goat. “You're the one fucking the little darlings, not me.”

 _Hold it in_ , the incubus reminded Giles, worriedly. _It doesn't matter what he says, only what he does._ “I see,” Giles answered crisply, heeding it's warning. He struggled for a change of topic, something to mask or at least rechannel his resentment. “How long have you been just sitting there waiting for me to wake up, anyhow?

“Long enough to know what you've been dreaming about,” his enemy chuckled.

 **Good Lord, why didn't you warn me?** The incubus remained curiously silent though palpably present. Perhaps it was angry with him? And yet, he felt almost as little emotion from it as from Dr. Rosenberg. And if he hadn't known any better, he'd have sworn what little emotion it was expressing towards him was something strangely akin to sympathy.

Ira, in contrast, continued to smile cruelly, clearly feeling no sympathy at all. “You don't remember your dreams?” the doctor scoffed. “Too bad. They were very entertaining.” But at the guilty, panicked hypothesis that flashed into Rupert's mind, the enemy only wrinkled his nose in a disturbingly Willowish show of genuine distaste. “Not *that*,” he sneered. “I'm a Sociopath, not a pervert.”

“And I'm a heart patient not a mind reader!” Giles snapped at him harshly, losing all patience. “Just tell me what more it is you want from me, and I'll see what I can do.”

“I want you to patch things up with Willow,” Ira answered seriously and calmly. “I need you to get back into a position in which you can more readily influence her decisions. Do whatever you have to do. Don't let any little things like laws or scruples stop you now. Because, clearly, they never have before, not when it was something you really wanted. And believe me, if you're really as interested as I know you think you are in protecting Willow, you should want me to be happy with her a lot more than you've shown so far.

“You'll be going home in a week or so. You can wait until then to actually see her, but in the meantime soften her up. Send her flowers and a heartfelt apology, something like that. Assure her of your undying love and unconditional support. Then at the first opportunity, drive a wedge between her and Sheila. That's the weak spot. Without Sheila, Buffy and Willow will inevitably clash over how to deal with you and this whole alternate family fantasy will go up in smoke. That's when you step in with one last hard push to sell the easy way out.”

Giles took a deep breath and tried in vain to think without revealing his thoughts. So this was the current fantasy. Ira wanted him to worm his way back into Willow's good graces the better to manipulate her into doing what Ira wanted rather than what she felt was right. _Which is what you were all resolved to do last week, before you chickened out._ **Shut up.**

“I won't bother pretending to agree to adhere to that,” the Watcher began at last, tiredly. “You know as well as I do that I'm looking for a way around you. One that I genuinely believe I will find and that you are confident I will not. But I'll play it your way as far as I can in the meantime, as much as anything because I'm as miserable without Willow as she is without me, silly as that may seem to you. As for her pregnancy, you know how many different directions my conflicting motives run. I suppose we'll both just have to see how that settles out. I won't let you harm her, I promise you that. If that means genuinely manipulating her to act against the dictates of her own conscience... well, we both know that I hope it never comes to that. But I'll do whatever I have to do. Whatever it takes to keep Willow safe and well. That's the bottom line as far as I'm concerned.”

“And I'll do whatever I have to do to maintain the public reputation of my family and to protect my own position and interests in the Godforsaken town,” Ira replied, every bit as seriously.

“Well then,” Giles noted stiffly, I think we understand each other.

“Yes,” Ira agreed, smiling evilly again, “I believe we do. Completely.”

 _Finally!_ The demon declared the moment the doctor had left the room. **Yes,** Giles thought back dryly, **alone at last. My isn't this relaxing. Just me and you and a straightjacket built for two.** _Not at all!_ The other voice in his head replied, sounding strangely cheerful. _Relaxing isn't remotely the word for it. Things are just about to get interesting._ Giles tried not to even wonder what it meant, tried not to waste his meager reserves of energy rising to the bait. But the damnable creature was all but humming aloud the melody of “Dream a Little Dream”.

 **All right, fine,** Giles demanded at last. **What exactly was I dreaming that both you and Dr. Rosenberg find so awfully amusing?** _Ha,_ the demon smirked, _you wouldn't believe me if I told you._ **Oh come off it!** The Watcher snapped back, exasperated. **You're just bursting to tell me. I can feel it. So, go on! Hit me with the punchline. What's been happening in my head while I was asleep that I don't know about?** _Nothing,_ the demon insisted, his unspoken words shot through with the very essence of laughter. _Nothing at all._

 


	9. One More Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GILES: All right, everyone! Pay attention! In just a few moments that curtain is going to open on our very first production. Now, everyone that Willow's ever met is out in that audience, including all of us. That means we have to be perfect. Stay in character, remember your lines, and energy energy energy, especially in the musical numbers!... Acting is not about behaving, it's about hiding. The audience wants to find you, strip you naked, and eat you alive, so hide.... It's all about subterfuge.... Now go on out there, lie like dogs, and have a wonderful time. Now, if we can stay in focus, keep our heads, and if Willow can stop stepping on everyone's cues, I know this'll be the best production of "Death of a Salesman" we've ever done.  
> WILLOW: No! This drama class is just ... I think they're really not doing things in the proper way, and now I'm in a play and my whole family's out there! And why is there a cowboy in "Death of a Salesman" anyway?  
> ~BtVS 4.22 "Restless"

The hallway was crowded. Students pushing and shoving everywhere. Willow had to stand on her tiptoes to even see the table with all the clipboards, or rather, to see the especially dense cluster of anxious humanity that marked it's location. The air was warm and stagnant, pungent with sweat and the apprehension of disappointment. Oxygen seemed in short supply.

For a moment Willow thought about turning around and pushing her way right back through the crowd and out into the fresh air and sunlight of Fondren High's main courtyard. But that was impossible. Wishful thinking. She could already hear her father's voice inside her head, angrily claiming to be not-angry-just-disappointed that she had, without justification or excuse, done irreparable damage to her college prospects by willfully failing to sign up for any extra-curricular activities. Never mind that between fighting demons and preparing to bring a new life into the world she barely had time for her curricular activities. That was a secret she had to keep as long as possible, at all costs.

Suddenly, a friendly face stood in the midst of that churning sea of strangers and acquaintances. Willow latched on with a sigh of relief, like a castaway grabbing hold of a raft of driftwood, grateful for the slenderest protection from the riptide that threatened to pull her under. “Amy!” she called in enthusiastic greeting. For a moment, her friend seemed not to hear her. “Amy, hi!” Willow called just a bit louder, her smile and her voice desperately cheerful.

At last, Amy raised her head and smiled back, walking in Willow's direction. “Hi,” she said amiably enough, but with a sort of odd reticence that Willow decided she must be imagining.

“Wow,” Willow over enthused, trying to resuscitate the already flagging conversation, “you've lost a lot of weight.”

“Had too,” Amy agreed with a sheepish smile.

Again, their conversation seemed destined to die in infancy. “So... what are you signing up for?” Willow tried again valiantly.

“Cheerleading,” Amy answered serenely, as if it were the answer to the meaning of life.

“Oh?” Willow asked, genuinely surprised. “I never knew you wanted to be a cheerleader.”

“Well yeah,” Amy said, as if it should have been obvious to anyone, though she had never once mentioned it in all the years they'd known each other. Then, seeing how puzzled Willow still was, she added with a nervous little laugh, “I've always wanted to be a cheerleader, like my mom, I guess I was just afraid to say so because I thought I never really could, you know, because of my weight? But, then, when I *finally* started listening to my mom and letting her lend me the wisdom of her experience, the pounds just flew off. And now we're training together six hours a day.”

“Wow,” Willow said. She couldn't really think of anything else to say. She couldn't imagine anyone willingly subjecting themselves to six hours of daily training with Amy's mom, least of all Amy. They couldn't even get through dinner without screaming at each other. Amy had spent most of the eighth grade sleeping over at Willow's house, until Ira had finally put a stop to it, saying that you don't get to be a healthy, happy, well-round A-student by spending all of your time with fat, miserable academic failures who think playing video games should qualify as a sport.

“I know,” Amy beamed, all bubbly again, “she's been pretty great. I wish I'd started listening to her sooner instead of letting my dad turn me against her. He's always been such a big stupid loser. But Mom, wow! She's the best! It feels good to finally be the daughter she deserves.”

“Um... okay,” Willow managed nervously, feeling more lost and alone than ever in the company of this new, improved Stepford Amy. Then, a new worry suddenly struck her. “Umm, Amy?” she pointed out nervously, “maybe you want to sign up for a few different things. I mean, the competition is pretty steep for Cheerleaders, and I heard they're only making three slots for Sunnydale girls. And, you know Amber and Joy are going to get two of them, so...” Willow's voice and courage started to fail her and she noticed how perturbed Amy was getting. … so... umm... you know, maybe you shouldn't stake every thing on just cheerleading is all I'm saying.” she stammered to her conclusion, looking into a pinched, exasperated face that suddenly reminded her much too much of Amy's mother.

“You know,” Amy replied breezily, as though she had nothing more in mind than casual chit-chat between friends, turning her smile back on like a lightbulb, “you could stand to loose a few pounds yourself. Your face has really rounded out in the last year, and I'm guessing those overall have a little more to hide these days too. I mean, nobody older than twelve would wear *that* if they had the figure to pull off a grown-up look, would they?”

Amy laughed lightly as Willow's heart sank and she found herself fighting back tears. Partly because insults always hurt twice as much from someone you're used to calling 'friend' than they do from the usual suspects. But also because she knew Amy was pretty much right. She was a dork. Apparently a huge fat dork who looked more and more pregnant every day. Pretty soon everyone was bound to know.

Willow only hoped she could hold out until twenty-four weeks or so. Then maybe at least she wouldn't have to have quite such a huge fight with her parents about why she wanted to 'throw away her future' by not having an abortion. But that was the distant future, a virtual lifetime of weeks and months away. Meanwhile, the unpleasantness that was the here and now was still unfolding.

Amy looked at Willow expectantly, defiantly challenging her to make some retort. With a small, miserable sigh, Willow ducked her head and turned away. She wished she could have talked Sheila into coming here with her, at least for moral support. But she had begged off, joking that she didn't feel safe in a room full of athletes and club joiners because that much school spirit was bound to be contagious. Willow felt a moment of secret, guilty pleasure imagining Sheila's response to Amy's teasing. They'd probably be lucky if they only got thrown out of the sign-ups and not expelled from school.

So, on second thought, maybe it was better that she'd come on her own. Strangely, though, it didn't feel better. In fact it felt worse by the minute, as though her value as a human being were somehow at stake. Surely, Willow told herself, she had to have some friends here. Didn't she? After all, she'd been going to school with these people for years. Some of them since kindergarten. What kind of a loser couldn't make and keep more than one or two friends in all that time?

Once again, Willow cast her eyes about, feeling as desperate as a storm tossed mariner, searching for land. Finally, she saw someone in the crowd ahead. Chris Epps! He was definitely and for sure her friend. Wasn't he? But Chris didn't answer when Willow called to him. He just stood there, grimfaced as was usual for him lately, stoically awaiting his turn at the clip boards.

There were plenty of other people there that Willow kind of knew, but no one else she would really call a friend. Jonathan Levinson, with whom she'd gone to school and temple and Hebrew School her whole life, was probably the closest thing. But right now he was doing his very best imitation of a potted plant, trying desperately to ignore four jocks who were making jokes at his expense literally behind his back.

Willow knew the from extensive personal experience that the last thing anyone in Jonathan's position wanted was for someone to call even more attention to them. And that went double for anyone of the opposite sex. That would only give his tormentors more ammunition in the form of an excuse to tease them both about their theoretical love lives.

Taking her cue from others of her own (dorky) kind, Willow waited; face forward, eyes down; shuffling forward at the pace of inertia until it was her turn at the table. She looked over the clipboards to see what was left. Every group had done things differently, however the existing Fodren members and their faculty sponsors saw fit. Some, like the Cheerleaders, had allowed anyone to audition but severely limited the number of new kids they would accept. Others had taken all who signed up on a first come basis until they were full.

Willow felt a deep sense of relief that both the Debate Team and the Glee Club had taken the latter approach and were now filled to capacity. At least that was a solid, verifiable excuse that she could give her father for not subjecting herself to the humiliation of auditioning for either. Instead she signed up for Chess Club, hoping that it would be as do-nothing a club as she had always hated Sunnydale's for being. That left Orchestra, yish! And Jazz Band, worse. And... okay... what else?

Oh! Science Club! It was new at Fodren this year, sponsored by Dr. Gregory, who was one of dozens of Sunnydale teachers the school had made room for on it's faculty, saving the school board from having to buy out too many contracts and beefing up their numbers to handle the dramatically increased student population. Willow was heartened to see Chris's name on the list as well as half a dozen others she recognized. On the down side, if Science Club did as many activities this year as it had last year at Sunnydale, it would be a serious drain on her time. Still she couldn't possibly think of not signing up. Her dad knew how much she loved Science Club and foregoing that pleasure would be a dead giveaway that something was seriously wrong.

That was two. Less than half as many activities as she'd signed up for at Sunnydale just a few weeks (and a lifetime) ago. Willow knew she needed at least one more to keep her dad even halfway satisfied. Something that he would have termed 'scholarship worthy'. Before the fire, he had insisted she sign up for two sports (she'd picked tennis and volleyball) because Title IX, yodda yodda yodda. But now she couldn't risk letting herself in for anything that physical. It would only bring her condition to light sooner rather than later.

So, with a sinking feeling of doom, Willow looked over the remaining sheets and chose the least worst option. Drama. There were scholarships for that. And it was pretty easy to not stand out at without being to obvious about wanting to blend into the background. But, the horrors of stage fright aside, if there was one thing her life didn't need even a tiny bit more of, it was Drama.

As it was, she could barely even think about Giles and the mess that was their too over and not over enough relationship without completely falling to pieces. Pile on top of that the not knowing what disaster would happen with Buffy when he got home, the not being able to talk to anyone about it, not even Sheila, and she was living on the edge of a catastrophic thermonuclear meltdown. And that was before taking into account her parents expectation or the nightly visitations of the undead at her bedroom window.

Just one more thing, Willow thought. If one more confusing, terrible, potentially life-altering thing descended upon her any time in the foreseeable future, she was going to finish out her teen years in a padded cell wearing a straight jacket. Willow took a deep breath and repeated one of her father's saying over and over in her head like a mantra. 'Babies cry about it; big girls get it done.' But deep down inside of her, there was one tiny part that really wanted to be a baby, that was waiting for that one more thing to happen so that she could let it all drop and lay down to cry the world away at last.

And then there it was, sitting on her desk in homeroom. A great big huge overwhelming arrangement of two dozen roses. The florist had delivered it to her here, even though it wasn't her birthday or valentines day or anything. She stared at the card for five or ten minutes, frozen, unable to react. One more thing. One more thing she had thought was settled even if settle for the worst that now had to be worked through all over again.

_**Reason is for fools. Call me but Love and I will never see sense again.** _

_**Yours alway, or as long as you will have me, Tristan** _


	10. I Already met you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwendolyn Post, Mrs.: The council wishes me to report on the *entire* situation here, including you.

_Hey, Rupert, wake up. You've got another visitor._ **Better than the same one,** Giles noted sleepily. _Too true_ , his demon agreed. True to his word, Dr. Rosenberg hadn't missed a single day in the last week popping in to read his mind. Anyone else, whoever they were, whatever they wanted, was bound to be an improvement. _Prettier too,_ the incubus noted approvingly.

For an instant, Rupert's heart leapt at that, sure that Willow must have returned. But no. She would have only just received his floral apologies this morning. Willow was not an impulsive girl. She would need at least a day or two to decide how to react. Whether she could trust him. Whether she could forgive him. _Eh, she'll be back. But this one will do in the meantime._

Groaning, sure that anything and especially anyone of whom his unwelcome companion approved had to be trouble of one kind or another, Giles reluctantly opened his eyes to see a blonde woman in her late thirties looking down at him with serious, businesslike disapproval. Her expression was so gravely superior, so clinically detached that, in that first moment, Giles had a bit of trouble making sense of the fact that she wasn't wearing scrubs and therefore wasn't a nurse.

She might have been a doctor, except that she wasn't wearing a white coat either. In fact, she was rather smartly pulled together in a classic, neutral skirt-and-blouse ensemble which flattered her figure without suggesting any conscious intention to draw the eye to her perfectly proportioned, beautifully womanly body. Her swan-like neck was adorned only by one small, impeccably tasteful, string of pearls. She was, in point of fact, rather lovely, despite the sour look she was giving him and that odd looking mole above her lip.

To his deep annoyance and even deeper embarrassment, Giles felt his body, once again, reacting as instantly and intensely as that of a dog who'd just scented a bitch in heat, just as he'd become so grudgingly accustomed to expect in the weeks prior to his hospitalization. **Well, that wasn't much of a break, was it! Sometimes I'd swear that you're actually trying to kill me.** _Oh come on. I've behaved for over a month. I have to have a little fun some time, and they're practically ready to send you home anyway. Let's give that ol' ticker a little test run, whadda ya say!_ **Drop dead.**

For a moment, Giles would have sworn that this woman, whomever she was, knew exactly what was going on inside his head... and inside his hospital gown. Unless he was imagining it, she looked him up and down once again, very thoroughly, with utter and complete disdain. But then she smiled so warmly that he was sure he must *have* imagined it. Perhaps she had only been frowning in puzzlement and was now relieved to have worked out whatever it was she'd been unsure about where he was concerned. _Nope, I saw it too. She thinks you're garbage._ **Thanks ever so for that clarification.** _She's just faking nice. Badly. Look, you can see the strain lines around her eyes from pulling that smiley face and trying to hold it on. Probably wants something._

The woman extended her hand in greeting and Giles shook it hesitantly. “How do you do...” she began, every bit as fake-warmly as her now clearly fake smile suggested, but in a very real, very posh, London accent. _Five bucks says she's that Lydia chick from the Council_. “... you must be Mr. Giles.” **Huh, I doubt it. She's much to old to have just just qualified as a Watcher. I say, you are getting rather desperate for a good shag, aren't you?** _It's been a month!_ _A month is the worst! A decade is easier; you forget what you're missing, but a month? Pure torture._

“Yes, I'm afraid I must,”Giles tossed off with only a slightly forced laugh, trying to ignore the demonic voice inside his head. _Bet me! Bet me she's not Lydia Chalmers! If she is, you have to fuck her._ **No.**

“Ah,” she said through her tight smile, not even bothering to fake a laugh, “how very droll.” _If she's not, I'll leave you alone for another month!_ **No.**

“ And you are?” _Two months!_ **I'm not going to wager on, on—** _Six! I won't even talk!_ **You're on.** **I know she happens to be British, but there's no way...**

“Lydia Chalmer. I'm sorry, I'd assumed you'd been told I was coming.”

 _Ha! Score! Well, go on. Charm the pant off of her. Work the helpless little wounded bird angle. Skirts are suckers for that. Sometimes literally... which is always a good warm up for the main event in my book._ “Miss Chalmer...” Giles began stiffly, trying harder than ever to ignore a stiffness of a completely different kind.

“*Ms.* Chalmers, if you please.” Lydia corrected him curtly, her smile wearing very thin indeed. “Let's do try to maintain a professional level of decorum, shall we, Mr. Giles.” Her tone was so scathing, that Giles felt embarrassed, as if she'd caught him thinking his impure thoughts about her. She couldn't really tell though, could she? Lying under the covers as he was, there was no way she could see that he had an erection, was there? **Not unless she has X-ray vision.**

 _Oh, thanks,_ Giles caught himself thinking, without the least bit of irony, feeling genuinely relieved and grateful for the reassurance... which in hindsight felt pretty ironic. **Well it shouldn't. I keep telling you we should be friends. I could help you a lot if you'd just listen to me.** _What, in between bouts of statutory rape?_ **Well, you certainly can't object to doing this old broad on those grounds.** _Touché(!)_ Giles mock conceded, his tone now very ironic indeed.

“I say,” said Ms. Chalmer, frowning dutifully with concern that seemed every bit as fake as her smile of greeting, “are you quite alright.”

“Well, not quite,” Giles answered, his own polite demeanor feeling equally strained, “but I will manage. They tell me I'm to be released tomorrow or Friday if all goes as expected. If you will just give me a ring when you know where you'll be staying...”

“I hardly think that will be necessary,” Lydia cut him off crisply. “I shall be staying at your flat, the better to assist you in all your duties, as the Council has instructed.”

“What!?!” he gasped, taken aback. “You, you, mean... no one ever said....”

“Come now,” she interrupted his stammering a bit more gently, which felt oddly worse. Patronizing. “you can hardly be expected to live on your own in your condition. Now,” she added, nodding sharply, with an air of having settled the matter, “I shall require your keys so that I can put the place in order for your return. We wouldn't want you coming home to cobwebbed ceilings and expired groceries, now would we.”

“Erm, no,” Giles agreed weakly, “certainly not.” _You have to tell her something._ **I know that! Just... give me a moment to think of something that doesn't sound false or illogical! I have no idea what Willow and her friends have done to the place after commandeering it for their headquarters or what she might find there, other than the three of them. I can hardly tell her that, can I!** _No, but you could tell her you have no idea what *Buffy* and her friends have done to the place since you opened it to her for use as a headquarters and they tagged along before you know anything about it. Unfortunately, that will put the two of you sleeping under the same roof without her having any idea that someone else has a prior claim on your affections, but sacrifices must be made for the cause, eh?_ **Has anyone ever told you that you are the most diabolical fiend ever to plague the soul of man?** _Thank you, I work out._

Lydia pulled a genuinely sour face again at last. “Is there something amusing in this situation that I am unaware of,” she all but hissed, bristling with Watcherly dignity.

“No, no,” he assured her truthfully if not quite honestly. “Not in the least.”

 

 


	11. Reorganization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anya: Can I just say... Men.  
> Cordelia: Second it.  
> Anya: Apart from being without class, the guy's obviously blind. Deserves whatever he gets.  
> ~BtVS 3.9 "The Wish"

“Tristan?” Sheila asked, leaning back against the metal door of the bathroom stall, holding the card from Willow's roses out in front of her and squinting at it as if she were trying to decipher some kind of ancient hieroglyphs. “Seriously? Like Brad Pitt in that dumb ass movie with the horses?” She looked at Willow askance but handed her a big wad of tissue at the same time, doing her best to be helpful.

Willow blew her nose loudly. “More or less,” she mumbled. It didn't do any good to explain these things. It just made her seem like even more of a freak. And God knew she felt freaky enough using a toilet for a chair, skipping class, hiding out in a bathroom stall with her best friend, reading a love note from the father of both of their unborn children.

“Wow,” Sheila teased with a tiny, lopsided, half mean, half sympathetic smile, trying to break the uncomfortable silence without admitting that anything could make her uncomfortable, “that's really lame.” Willow shrugged. Sheila puckered up her face like a bulldog again, thinking. “Why didn't you tell us he dumped you?” She asked at last, not one for beating around the bush.

But Willow couldn't afford to be quite so blunt in her response. Instead she minced her words a little, hoping Sheila wouldn't catch on to any of the ways that she could possibly be offended by her reasons. “Because of Buffy,” she said, “... mostly.”

“She'd have been pissed,” Sheila agreed. Then, with a short bark of laughter, she admitted, “Hell, I'd have probably wanted to beat the crap out of him too.” Which of course was exactly what Willow hadn't said. Sheila (Buffy too for that matter) was great as a friend to turn to for help handling really rough situations. But for keeping things smooth in the first place... Willow just wasn't sure she could trust either of them to be able (or even willing) to do that. Especially where Giles was concerned.

“So you're getting back with him, right?” Sheila asked, her tone suggesting that was what anyone in Willow's shoes would do. It rankled her just a little. But the truth was the truth, so she nodded and wiped at her tear streaked face and still weeping eyes with another wad of toilet tissue. “But not today?” Sheila guessed, mischief and the love of mischief edging her voice again.

Willow looked up at her. She had that slightly mean smile again. “Alright, what are you thinking?” she asked just a little warily.

Sheila's smile widened. “I'm thinking that today seems like a good day to buy a Cadillac.” Wait, was she serious? Willow searched her friend's puggish face. Sheila was totally serious.

“But I can't do that!” Willow gasped out, truly shocked by the suggestion.

“Sure you can,” Sheila insisted, her offhand tone almost more conversational than conspiratorial.

“But... but... that's... That's sealing!” Willow objected.

Sheila shrugged. “You did it to get all those books and computers and stuff,” she pointed out.

“But that's different!” Willow insisted defensively. “We need all of that stuff to help Buffy! *And* Giles! And, and to protect the planet! From vampires and, and stuff!”

“Right,” Sheila countered. “The next time I see a vampire I'll throw your new wireless modem at it.”

“But... but...” Willow grasped for another counter argument, holding to her position by instinct and guilt rather than for any good reasons she could name.

“Are you really going to say it wouldn't be right,” Sheila chided her gently. “After what he put you through the last few weeks? Trust me. Between the jerks I've dated all and the rodents Mom and Nonna have brought home over the years, I know what 'I'm sorry' presents are supposed to be like. From a guy with that much money, who was that big a shit to you, two dozen roses doesn't say 'I'm sorry I stomped on your heart and I'll do anything to get you back'. It says 'I'm still a shit and I think you're a chump, but I'd kinda like to fuck you some more.' First make him pay what he deserves to pay. Make sure he really is sorry. Then you can take him back if you want.”

“But won't that just make him mad?” Willow asked worriedly.

Sheila shrugged. “If it does, then you'll know he's full of shit. He's not sorry, just horny.”

Willow thought for a moment and sighed the sigh of giving in to something you really want to do but expect to regret. “Not a Cadillac though,” she bargained. “We have to be practical. What we really need is baby stuff.”

“But he's s'posed to buy us that anyway,” Sheila argued right back. We have to get at least one huge expensive thing that says 'lump it if you want me back.'”

“Something bigger than a crib and layette?” Willow asked doubtfully, feeling a bit stifled, a bit sick.

“Yeah,” Sheila insisted. “Something way bigger. Something that all that other stuff will fit inside.”

“Something like a used minivan?” Willow guessed, hopeful that whatever Sheila was thinking wouldn't be any worse than that. Giles's bank accounts were pretty healthy, but they did have their limits.

“'Course not,” Sheila said, slightly reproachfully. Something way classier than that. And a lot more practical too. Especially in a town all full of vampires.”

The bell rang. Lunch was over. Sheila tried to excuse herself, with un-Sheila-like punctuality, to get to her next class on time. When Willow tried to insist on more of an explanation of what she meant, Sheila just laughed and called over her shoulder, “You'll see.” And she did.

“Sheila?” Willow asked doubtfully as they stood in front of an unassuming storefront on Main Street at three-thrty that afternoon, “What are we doing at a real estate office?”

“Shopping,” Sheila replied with wicked glee. She moved towards the glass front door of the local Century21 office, motioning with her head for Willow to follow.

“Wait, stop!” Willow all but wailed. She reached as if to grab Sheila's arm, but under the force of the brunette's tough-chick glare of warning the redhead checked herself. Sheila stopped anyway, turning to face Willow, arms crossed impatiently. She wasn't the only person looking at Willow expectantly. Half a dozen small town heads had turned, hoping for drama.

Willow dropped her voice to a plaintive whisper and inched slightly closer to her friend. “Sheila,” she rasped out in quiet desperation, “Giles cannot afford to buy us a house!”

“Duh, really?” Sheila mocked, rolling her eyes. She turned and walked into the office with Willow trotting at her heels, not knowing whether to spit or swallow the lump of panic in her throat, weather to run or to pass out.

“Ah, Ms. Martin,” The Agent called cheerfully, beaming at her with the hopeful avarice of real estate agents everywhere. “Right on time.” He shook Sheila's hand, not seeming to notice her getting-away-with-murder grin, then turned to Willow, his hand politely extended. “And you must be Ms. Gluzman.”

“Um, yeah,” Willow agreed hesitantly, letting him grasp her hand briefly in token of a shake.

“I have the lease for unit 7B right here, if you ladies would be so kind as to have a seat...” He motioned them toward two chairs placed side by side at a small conference table as he took the seat facing them. The table sat so close to the big plate-glass front window of the shop that it made Willow feel as if they and their dubious business were on display for all of Sunnydale to see. Willow was so panicked and confused that it took her a good fifteen minutes of listening to the agent ramble and dutifully scanning documents to figure out what was going on.

They were renting the apartment next to Giles! In Sheila's mom's sort-of-maiden name, her first name plus the last name of one of her step-father's, Nonna Serretti's third husband. With Willow posing as her girlfriend! Using *another* name that was also more or less Sheila's mom's name. Her middle name and the last name of the first husband who was legally, but not really, Sheila's dad. The papers were all filled in, complete with two different dates of birth (both in 1976) to go with the two names. And the two social security numbers that Willow didn't recognize at all!

Fraud! This was fraud! It was a crime. It was illegal. They could go to jail! Then, they'd be criminals. Pregnant teen criminals. In jail! That could not happen! That was way beyond statistics. That was a soap opera. Throw in a few demons and the weird reincarnating warrior-maiden subplot and it was practically an Indian soap opera. Both of her parents would kill her, tag-team style.

Willow dropped her pen midsignature. “Um... will you excuse us for a minute,” she asked nervously, nervous in all directions. “We have to go to the bathroom.” The real estate agent blinked twice and raised his eyebrows, but said noting as Willow stood and frantically motioned for Sheila to follow her, smiling tightly. Sheila yawned, rolled her eyes, crossed her arms and finally, impatiently stood and walked with her friend to the tiny restroom at the back of the office.

“What?” she asked when they were alone inside with the door locked. It sounded to Willow like Sheila was trying to sound bored, but she actually sounded mildly pissed off. Which probably just meant she was rankled, because when Sheila got pissed off there was never anything mild about it.

“I thought we were supposed to be spending *Giles's* money,” Willow hissed frantically, “on something practical.”

Sheila smiled proudly. “We are,” she explained. “I need a place to live since Nonna kicked me out, and you need a place to tell your parents—and Buffy—your 'sleeping over' that won't get you or your dude busted. It's perfect. You'll even be close enough to come to the phone if you have to. Plus, when the rug rats pop out—”

“Oh my God!” Willow cried, her brain finally catching up to what Sheila had started out with. Then, remembering to whisper, she hissed, “Why didn't you tell me you got kicked out?”

Sheila shrugged, looking genuinely embarrassed, a feeling Willow had not known for sure that she was capable of until that moment. “Why didn't you tell me you got dumped?” she mumbled, looking away.

Willow shrugged guiltily herself and changed the subject back to the whos and hows of the scam they were running. By the time Sheila finished explaining, Willow was sort of impressed. “Well it's not like I invented it or anything,” Sheila pointed out. “I bet my nonna's done it ten times. Usually to an ex or someone like that so it doesn't matter if their credit gets trashed. And anyways all we're really using of Mom's is her credit score and she kinda owes me that anyway. Giles is still going to be the one paying the rent, through that dummy account you set up to pay for our cell phones so it doesn't look like he's paying for those.”

“Okay,” Willow persisted, still a bit confused, “I get that there's no real harm to your mom as long as the rent gets paid, and I get that she owes you a place to stay, cause she's your mom, and I even get the part about her dead cousin's number and everything, but how, exactly, does she 'owe' you her credit score?”

“Cause,” Sheila explained, just a trace of bitterness edging her voice, “the only reason she still has good credit is because when I used to live with her she put all her cards and stuff in my name then filed bankruptcy on me twice, once when I was five, and once when I was thirteen.”

Willow blinked at Sheila. Her mouth literally gaped for a moment before she had the presence of mind to close it. Then tears welled up from her heart into her eyes from the sudden feeling of tenderness and affection she felt towards Sheila. She had an almost (but not quite) overwhelming impulse to hug her friend and tell her that all her years of neglect, abuse, and exploitation were over. That everything in her new, better family would be alright. That she, Willow Rosenberg, would make it alright.

Willow wanted so much to hold Sheila. To comfort her. To stroke her hair, to kiss her.... “Oh, oh no,” Willow gasped as she was slammed by her second huge shock in as many seconds. All those feelings! It was eighth grade and Amy all over again. It was... some kind of transference, or, or... well something. Willow knew now that she was not gay, even though she might have thought so then, because, well, she was in love with Giles. Wasn't she? Unless that was just a magic thing after all. Demons toying with them.

“Oh, don't make a big production,” Sheila groused. “Just sign the lease so we can get out of here. I want to get to the mall before Baby Bump closes.”

Willow nodded and followed her out of the bathroom. In another five minutes all the papers were signed and the agent was handing Sheila and Willow each a key. “Just out of curiosity,” he asked, “How did you hear about the vacancy so fast? The tenant just disa—uh, decided to move last week.”

Sheila looked at Willow expectantly, as though it were still perfectly clear that bright ideas and quick answers should be her department. “Oh, uh, um... Giles! Uh, Mr. Giles, next door. He used to work at our school, so... um, that is the school we used to go to when we went to school, years and years ago.”

“Oh, yes, well,” the agent said, clearly feeling awkward about her obvious but unexplained distress. “They seem like a nice couple.”

“Couple?” Willow asked, feeling nothing but puzzled as to why he would think that, her own lies and anxieties momentarily forgotten. “It's just him, though, isn't it?”

“Oh no,” the agent assured her. “Mrs. Giles was just in here a few hours ago to pay their rent.”

 


	12. Our Mrs. Giles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow : Why should I trust you?  
> Riley : Just sort of hoping you'd think I have an honest face.  
> Willow : I've seen host faces before. They usually come attached to liars.  
> ~BtVS 4.7 "The Initiative"

“Rupert, we have a problem,” Ira said seriously and without preamble as he strolled into Giles' hospital room without warning or invitation.

Giles didn't bother to protest his barging in. It wasn't as though he needed to make his feelings known. Ira knew them all already. “What problem?” he said instead, just as seriously. If it was really a problem they both had, it had to be something to do with Willow.

“It is,” Ira confirmed. “She's going to tell her mother about you. She was planning on doing it tonight at dinner. Of course, when I caught her thinking it I told her to go sleep over at her friend Sheila's so that her mother and I could have a romantic evening. But that only gives you until tomorrow to fix things, so you'd better make it snappy. I already did your discharge paperwork. I signed for both of us. So come on and get dressed; let's go.”

“Wait, what?” Giles asked. His head was verily spinning. “How is this happening? I'm not a mind reader you know. Were the flowers the wrong gesture? Was, was she insulted? Oh, I should have known not to try that old maneuver on such a bright young woman,” Giles fretted.

“No, no,” Ira assured him, handing him a shopping bag containing a stylish new suit of clothes in his own size. “The flowers went over great. Sheila saw through them, but Willow was bowled over anyway.”

 _See, Rupesy, I told you all women in love were suckers._ **So you did. And please don't ever call me that.** “Well what then?” Giles persisted even as Ira helped him into his new clothes, “Why this sudden crisis? Does it have something to do with Sheila?”

“No,” Ira explained, grimly amused. “It has something to do with your wife.”

“My what?” Giles cried out, aghast. “My who?”

Ira cocked his head sideways, then threw it back in a howling laugh of both amusement and relief. “No, you really don't. Well this should be a cinch to fix then. But boy she sure thinks you do, I wonder—” But then, suddenly Ira knew, because Giles knew. It has to be Lydia. There was no one else who could possibly have any reason to make such a claim. And she'd as much as said she planned to move in on him bag and baggage.

Ira clamped his mouth shut. Giles wished he could do the same with his brain. He hated giving away both his frustration with Lydia's presumption and meddling and his worry for her safety on account of it. He hated realizing that what Ira wasn't saying was no doubt that she ought to be dealt with before she learned things that she shouldn't know and that, even if the cold-hearted doctor hadn't been thinking that before, he might well be now because of Giles thinking it.

 _This is no time to worry about her,_ the demon chided him. _We need to focus on getting Willow back on the home team and keeping Dadzilla off our back._

Ira smiled thinly. “Your friend is right,” he agreed. “I need you to get your ass over to Sheila's and convince my daughter to keep your secrets. By whatever means necessary. Now come on, I'll wheel you downstairs and get you a cab.”

Giles hardly had time to consider alternatives. He knew nothing would be gained by asking this bastard why he'd taken the ridiculous and counterproductive step of insuring that Sheila would be present to witness and interfere with his bid for Willow's heart, so he didn't bother. Instead, he asked for and received Ira's rather amused assurance that no parents of guardians would be on hand to report him to the proper authorities.

Giles didn't quite comprehend the source of the other man's mirth until minutes later, when he was bundled into a cab and heard Rosenberg giving the driver Sheila's address. “Wha—but that's—” The good doctor just grinned and nodded. **Dear good!** Giles though, shaken. Maybe still shaking. _And then some!_ His demon agreed. The address in question was in his own complex, in the unit right next door to his.

 **Bloody hell** , Giles fumed silently, **why doesn't she just move right in with me and my 'wife'!?! And Willow too, the more the merrier(!)** _Might save you some money if she did,_ the incubus sort of agreed. **How's that? Oh no, you don't really think...** _No, of course not. I'm sure the little Catholic hooker's *mom* decided to celebrate kicking her pregnant ass out of the house by leasing her an apartment for $1300 a month._

Rupert's budding indignation withered on the vine, cankered with guilt. **Of course. Yes. I must be paying for it. And I ought to. Willow was right to help her, even if for the wrong reasons.** _Well at least you won't have to brave the vamp infested streets just to come over and baby sit so the little vixen can go out and bag another child support payor._ **Something to look forward to,** Giles snarled silently. _Well you don't have to get pissy about it. I'm just saying._ **Why don't you stop buggering up my life and I'll stop getting 'pissy' about it,** Rupert thought shortly.

Too soon, the taxi arrived at it's destination. Giles took his time getting out, finding both his footing and his intentions uncertain. Bloody hell, what on Earth was he going to say to her? To either of them for that matter. All he could hope for was that Buffy wouldn't be there. And that neither would his 'wife' Lydia.

Dear God, something had to be made to change. The thought of Lydia and Sheila living next door to one another with he and Willow caught in the middle, not to mention Buffy! It was all just completely intolerable. _Isn't that grounds for a divorce in California?_ **Shut up.**

Taking a deep breath, Giles stepped up to what was now evidently Sheila's front door and rang the bell. While he waited for a response he straightened his tie. And his pocket square. And his cuffs. And his glasses. Which he then cleaned. Before ringing the bell again. After another interminable silence, he knocked hesitantly. Then a bit harder.

“Mr. Giles,” the voice he recognized as belonging to Lydia Chalmers drawled languidly, “I wasn't expecting you home until tomorrow at least. I say, you haven't forgotten which flat is your own have you? I suppose you've been thoroughly checked for any sort of brain damage?”

Giles turned to find her standing at his own open door. He couldn't help glaring at the woman a bit, despite needing desperately to be on good terms with her. “I was just going to have a word or two with my neighbor,” he countered, just the fainest hint of indignation edging his words. “But she doesn't seem to be at home.”

“Ah, yes,” Lydia said sounding a bit scornful herself, or perhaps just haughty, “those two young women. Strange, from the size of the van deliveries they were getting earlier in the day I'd have sworn they were only just moving in.”

Giles couldn't help but be surprised, and he had spoken before he thought. “You mean a moving van?” He'd have thought any parents who would toss out their own child at such a terrible time wouldn't have been decent enough to have sent her with much more than a suitcase.

Lydia wrinkled up her forehead and pursed her lips in a studied but obvious imitation of speculation, 'guessing' at things she clearly knew, “Actually, to me it looked more like a delivery van from some furniture shop. At any rate, they unloaded enough for an entire household, nursery and all.”

“Ms. Chalmer,” Giles replied thinly, formal courtesy stretched tight over his growing temper, “If you would be so kind as to step aside and let me enter my own home, perhaps we could discuss this privately.”

“Of course,” Lydia answered with chilly civility, “Let's.” But her manor didn't remain so chilly once they were inside. In fact, the discussion was soon quite heated on both sides and Rupert's temper far from controlled.

“... Because you have no bloody right!” he was shouting when Lydia began to shout over him, losing her temper for the first time. The mood he was in, once was once too often. He grabbed Lydia and pulled her to him, down onto the sofa where he rolled on top of her. For a moment, he thought he would strangle her. Then, suddenly, inexplicably, they were kissing.

Moments later they were groping and fondling one another. At some point Giles must have ripped Lydia's blouse open. He had a vague memory of fabric straining and giving way as tiny round buttons scattered like a handful on confetti. One of her breasts was in his mouth, the other in his hand when he felt her hands squeezing and rubbing his now naked and very firm cock.

“Lydia, what on earth are we doing?” he murmurer against her neck as they went on nuzzling and kissing. At the same time, he grabbed her ass under her hiked up skirt and gave her buttocks an appreciative squeeze before pulling her underclothes down below her knees.

“Nothing of my design,” she panted, sounding at one and the same time very cross with him and utterly breathless with passion.

“Oh dear God,” Giles moaned. **Well this is just cheating.** _Hey, I'm just collecting on a bet. You're the one trying to Welch._ **“Vile Fiend.”**

“I beg your pardon?” Lydia huffed indignantly as she put one foot down on the floor in order to spread her legs wider apart and make it easier for Giles to mount her.

“Not you,” Giles sighed apologetically as he probed her labia gently with the head of his cock. Finding her entrance warm, slick, and ready; he plunged in, terrified by his racing heart but thrilled to the bone with sexual excitement nonetheless. “The, the inc—” _Careful there buddy,_ the vile fiend tried to warn him. _You gotta keep your story straight._

But it was too late for that. “The incubus!” Lydia cried out as she rolled her hips against him, writhing and squirming with physical pleasure, in strange contrast to her angry, indignant tone of voice. “Mr. Giles! Oh, oh my. Oh! Oh! Yes! Yes!” Her intended screed was interrupted by an unscheduled orgasm.

Giles kept fucking her, hard and fast, ready to be done but unwilling to stop without reaching his own release. “Oh, oh, Lydia! God, Lydia! You feel—I feel—Oh, God, Yes! Lydia!” In moments the point of climax came and passed, for both of them. For a little while, all they could do was lie there and hold one another, catching their breath. **Well, at least she didn't give me a hear attack.** _Yeah, I told you. You're fine. Don't worry so much._ _There's just one little problem..._

Suddenly, the hardwood floor flew up and smashed Giles in the face so hard he was afraid his glasses would be broken. Or his nose. By the time he had determined that both were fully intact after all, it was entirely clear what had happened. Lydia had pushed him from the couch to the floor with a surprising degree of force.

 **Oh great. Another one. Just what I needed. Thanks ever so. Hey, wait just a minute!** “Strange,” Lydia cut through his thoughts frostily. “I seem to remember being told that the incubus was no more. That it had been defeated by your semi-castration.” _Ouch, boy is this bitch pissed at you!_ **I shouldn't wonder. How were you even able to make this happen so far from the Hellmouth? Your demonic energies should be weak here.** “Well?” Lydia demanded.

“Evidently, I was wrong,” Giles offered sheepishly as he gingerly picked himself up off the floor, pulled up his underpants from around his ankles and sat down on the couch next to her. Her skirt was smoothed down over her otherwise bare thighs and her arms folded. A pair of plain white nickers waved from one ankle like a flag. God help him, satisfied as he was, though his desire for her was no longer so overwhelming, it was still heavy and palpable.

“I was just trying to ask the bastard how he managed such a thing so far from his body and his power center,” Giles explained crossly, though it was hard to say at whom. “But I think he prefers laughing at my ignorance to enlightening me. Look, I'm awfully sorry about all this,” he apologized, his tone a bit softer, entreating her forgiveness.

“Indeed?” Lydia sneered, somewhere between bristling and mocking. _Yeah, about that, you keep calling her 'Lydia'..._ **Shut up. I've heard enough from you.** “If you'll excuse me *Mr. Giles*...” she began, rising to her feet with ever so much dignity. But her sentence was never finished.

Instead the night was broken by a horrifying scream. It was like something from a slasher movie, a young woman's voice become the embodiment of a gaping emotional wound. A shriek like the sound of a soul being ripped apart by the furies and dragged to hell.

It was Willow.


	13. Out of the Bag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve: What's the promlem officer?  
> Xander: That's not Eve.  
> ~BtVS 7.11 "Show Time"

Willow's jaw snapped shut a moment too late. The scream was already out. It had felt like shock and pain, but must have sounded like rage. Giles's wide worried eyes told her that much, but all Willow felt now was empty and sick. It didn't matter, Sheila was clearly angry enough for both of them. She pushed her way past Willow and through the door, shaking her fist threateningly and cussing a blue streak.

“Please,” Giles begged, “This isn't what it looks like!” Of course, that was just about exactly what anyone in his position would say. The weird thing was, he didn't seem to be trying to convince his wife, or even the girl who was inches in front of him calling him a son-of-a-long-and-colorful-something and threatening physical violence. No, that would be too easy. His tortured, pleading was firmly fixed on Willow, as if she were the only other person in the room who mattered to him at all.

And now Willow felt sick and empty and sad and pitiful and wrong and wronged and furious. How did he have the balls to look at her like that after what he'd just been doing? Especially given who he'd been doing it with! Steeling herself, not listening to the huge traitorous part of herself that wanted to feel sorry for him, Willow stepped forward and gave him her best, most scathing glare. It was exactly what she imagined her mother would have done to her father... in some alternate universe in which he would ever do what Giles was doing just now.

For a moment, everyone was still and silent, even Sheila. But as the moment aged Willow knew something had to be said, and it seemed to be her turn. She opened her mouth to speak... to say... what exactly?

“All right,” Giles preempted her, sounding defensive and mortified at the same time. “Clearly it is *what* it looks like....” because how could he deny it. “But—But, wh-what you need to, to understand...” But what else was there to understand? There she was, torn open blouse, crossed arms, blazing eyes, shredded pantyhose thrown over a fallen lamp along with his tweed paints. And even without all that, her Londony accent and proprietary attitude would have been enough. This was Giles's wife!

“Shut up jerk wad!” Sheila shouted, clearly done hearing him out. “Nobody wants to hear your lame-ass excuses!”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Mrs. Giles agreed with frosted irony. “I couldn't have said it better myself, Rupert Dear. Now if you'll excuse me, I've had a long day. I believe I shall go upstairs and have a long hot bath while you... tidy up down here.”

Everyone silently watched her go, mainly because Willow still had no idea what to say. She had never in her wildest dreams ever imagined herself in a position like this. These kinds of situations happened to other people. Really, really bad people. Or at least really, really messed up people. From broken homes. Delinquents. Sluts. Home wreckers. Sheila's.

“Well?” Sheila demanded so sharply that for one terrifying moment Willow actually though that her friend had read her mind. But, of course, she was talking to Giles.

“That woman is not my wife!” Giles insisted quietly but frantically. “Willow, I swear to you, I never saw her before today. She's just—” There was a swirl of frantic motion as Sheila took a swing at Giles and his sentence was cut short. Willow was prepared to see him rolling on the ground, moaning in pain. Maybe even to jump to his aid. But that wasn't what was happening. Giles had deftly sidestepped Sheila's attack, leaving her off balance and soon sprawling harmlessly across the couch.

“Don't,” Willow whispered gently as she helped Sheila to her feet. Her soul painfully divided against itself she added, glaring fiercely in Giles's direction, “He's not even worth it.”

“Ah yes,” Giles murmured as if aside to an unseen audience, “bound to.”

Sheila tilted her head quizzically for a moment, like a slightly confused dog. Then, like a switch being thrown, the matter was decided. Sheila dealt with uncertainty by one simple rule. When in doubt, get mad. “Hey,” she demanded, “Who the hell are you talking to like that?”

Giles laughed in a way that could only be described as on the borderline between irony and hysteria. “Well, I'm talking to the demon in my testicle, naturally. I'd tell you it's name but I'm afraid we've never been properly introduced. But then, neither have you and I. So, really, why stand on ceremony?”

“Wait,” Willow couldn't help but interject, gesturing as though she were clearing cobwebs, trying to banish her confusion and strip this tangled conversation down to its functional essence, “What do yo mean she's not your wife? Who is she then?”

Giles leaned in towards the two young women and lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “She's a fellow watcher, Lydia Chalmers. The Council has sent her to watch me, to make sure my little possession problem has erm resolved.”

“Which it hasn't,” Willow pointed out exasperatedly

“No, clearly not,” Giles agreed. Then, his voice filled with resentment that was clearly pointed elsewhere, “In fact it seems to be getting worse.”

Willow still wasn't sure she understood. “But why?” she pressed. Why would you tell them—” and then she got it. A welter of confused vowel sounds ensued and before she knew it Willow was wrapped in Giles's warm, strong arms. Filled with love and sad, conditional joy. Lost in their mutual weeping and caressing.

“Hey, lovebirds,” Sheila intervened, jarring them back to reality. “I hate to break up your hot date, but what happens when Princess Dianna up their drops a dime on us?”

“I'll have to talk to her,” Giles murmured, half to Willow and half to himself. “Make her see reason.”

“But what if you can't?” Willow worried aloud.

“Look, I'll take care of it,” Giles insisted with the kind of desperate firmness that is clearly only masking deep and terrible doubts. “You girls just... go next door and call Buffy. Make sure she does patrol and doesn't come by here to talk about it, alright?”

The two girls exchanged puzzled looks. Was he actually giving them orders? Should they follow them, even if they were quite reasonable? It wasn't as though he'd given them the slightest shred of real evidence that he wasn't married to Lydia. But whatever the truth turned out to be about that, they had both seen enough to know that Watchers and Slayers were the real deal when it came to saving the world. How could you not help with that?

Agreeing with less than a shrug of overt communication, the two young women turned to go and do as they'd been told. They were halfway to the door when Giles turned to them, raised his head and added, “And erm Sheila? If there's ever anything you need, for yourself or, or for the baby, don't hesitate to ask. I may be a lot of things, but I'm no shirker of responsibility. If you, both of you, can be strait with me, then I'll try to be strait with you. No more lying or second guessing each other's motives or doing things behind one another's backs, alright?”

Sheila shrugged. “Sure whatever,” she said indifferently.

“When have I ever not been straight with you?” Willow demanded. But thinking of the little shopping spree she'd just finished, she knew she wasn't quite entitled to her self-righteousness.

But Giles didn't call her out on it. “I'm sorry,” he whispered with genuine regret, anguish filling those big puppy-dog eyes. “So, sorry,” he murmured, dropping his head in shame. Willow wanted to run to him and throw her arms around him again, but somehow she couldn't quite. Not with the lump growing in her throat and Sheila wriggling in place. Anxious to be gone, however coolly she tried to play it off.

So Willow made a face that wanted to be a smile but wasn't quite, shrugged her shoulders and followed Sheila outside. Where they almost ran smack dab into two plainclothes police detectives with guns on their belts and their badges pinned right to their shirts. Willow almost spoke to them, almost asked what they were doing at her boyfriend's front door. But Sheila tugged her in the direction of their own front door, and (thinking better of it) Willow followed her inside.

Before Willow could speak a word of regret for not getting to hear all the action, Sheila was pulling two water glasses from a boxed set of six and handing her one. They listened. And once again, for what felt like the millionth time that day, Willow was so shocked she hardly knew what to think. “I'm Detective Stein,” the man explained, “and this is Detective Winslow. We'd like to ask you a few questions about the murder of Lydia Chalmers." 

 


	14. A Better Hand of Cards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy: Interesting lady. Can we kill her?  
> ~BtVS 3.7 "Revelations"

“Murder?” Giles blinked at the two detectives stupidly for a moment. His mind was still half focused on the desperate scrambling he'd just done to get his trousers on and Lydia's stray bit's of clothing shoved under the couch... except.... “Murder?” he repeated in astonishment and confusion. Then the obvious answer hit him with full force. _That's what I've been trying to tell you_ , the demon explained exasperatedly. _No way is that woman named Lydia. There's too much lag time on recognition when you called her Lydia, and then half the time when she does get it she looks much too amused._ **I told you she was too old to be still in training. Dear God, she killed Lydia just... well... to be her? For what?** _The glamor of the swinging Watcher lifestyle?_ **Ha. Ha.**

“That what I said,” the male detective repeated, “Lydia Chalmers was found dead in a bathroom stall at Sunnydale Regional Airport, strangled to death with her own scarf. No luggage. No purse. Only thing in her coat pocket was this address, with your name on it. You wanna tell us about that?”

“Wha—I... don't know what to say,” Giles fumbled to answer. Between being stunned by this news and struggling to keep his eyes off of the (objectively rather plain) female detective standing behind his more active interrogator, he was more than a little flummoxed. “I know the name,” he assayed bravely. “A—uhm—well, she's a, erm... friend of a friend of a... relative... sort of … thing.” Dear, God, the woman wasn't wearing a push up bra or any extra padding, those were her actual breasts. You could tell by the shape of them, both of the breasts and of the woman.

More silence. Focus damn it. “Well, and, you—as you might... this being such a small town, so far from home, maybe she meant to look me up? I really don't know.” _You know he's not buying it, right._ **Just shut it. And stop distracting me with women. I'm trying to think of a way to deal with this before it gets any worse.** _You're joking right? Man, things just got a million percent better._ **Now that I'm being questioned about a murder and stammering through it like a guilt-ridden fool you mean?** _What? They don't have anything. I doubt if you're even really a suspect._

“Mr. Giles?” the male detective prompted... or possibly repeated, “You still with us?”

“I... what? No, no of course, erm... detective...? I was just—How do you know it was—I—Um … How did you identify her, erm Lydia, Miss Chalmers, that is, if all of her things were missing?” The Detective narrowed his eyes in a very unpleasant way. _Okay, *now* you're a suspect._ **“Just shu—** oh, uh, ah. That is...”

The female detective drummed her fingers on her ample hips impatiently. Giles stumbled over his tongue for a bit longer, failing to adequately fill the pauses that followed her partner's terse bits of partial explanation of how the passport control agents has helped them to learn the identity of the real Lydia Chalmers. “Seen her, well no, I don't know that I'd ev—I certainly hadn't seen her in fifteen years—well ten years at least.” _Oh for the love of Lucifer,_ the demon hissed in exasperation, _I take back everything I ever said about you being such a good liar. Just follow my lead._

The Demon was right of course. Giles could lie well enough if he had to, but he needed a firmer understanding of what he was lying about, why, and who benefited. His growing realization that his firmest and most immediate reason for effectively harboring another Watcher's killer was the fear that she might report him to The Council for spite if he were to turn her in certainly wasn't helping. Nor the fact that his second best reason was the odd feeling of guilt that always went along with being less than a friend to someone you'd recently had sex with, regardless of the circumstances.

So, Giles followed the demon's lead. Told the lies he was urged to tell. Kept silent where bidden to keep silent. And it worked. Sort of. Within half an hour, the detectives went away. They seemed... not exactly satisfied, but satisfied for now. When they were gone, Giles allowed himself a brief sigh of relief (and a double shot of scotch) before saying aloud, **“Alright, now what?”**

 _Now you show her your hand and offer to fold for the right price._ **“Could we be a bit less cryptic please? I've had a very long day.”** _You're no fun._ **Really?** Rupert though dryly. **That's not what you said about an hour ago.** _Stop it_ , the incubus replied, even more dryly still. _You're making me blush._ The laugh that escaped Rupert's lips was small and tinged with irony, but genuine for all that. **Just tell me** , he prompted. **What is this wonderful card I've drawn that suddenly changes none of a kind into a royal flush.** _You really need me to spell it out?_ The sense of this last seemed sincerely surprised, but then, Giles supposed, that may just have been a deliberate attempt to make him feel foolish.

_Rupert, you wound me. I keep telling you, I'm the best friend you'll ever have._ **Oh sorry, I've been having a bit of trouble remembering that since you half castrated and nearly killed me(!) Not to mention making me have sex with children and murderers. You never have answered me how your able to do that all the way out here, by the way, and don't think I haven't noticed.**

_Oh...kaaaay. I'm going to take all of that as a yes and explain thing so your mortal mind can understand._ **“Thanks ever so.”** _You and your little girlfriend have two problems, right? The Council and Dr. Frankindad._ **By my count that makes three.** He did not mean the baby, and they both knew it. _Fine, alright, I am what I am. But my point is that Mrs. Murderer just solved both problems for you. To a point anyway. She can't afford to turn you in to the Council unless she wants to wake up dead or in some form of prison, so Ira has no reason to kill her which gives you no reason to cross him, and even if he does kill her, hey, she killed Lydia so what's the big deal?_

Giles drained the dregs of his scotch chased it with a long, deep sigh. Except for the part about it being perfectly fine if this woman were killed, the demon was right again. He was so far to the wrong side of every law imaginable at this point that he could sooner trust a fugitive killer with his secrets than an innocent fellow Watcher with nothing to hide. Speaking of...

“Mr. Giles,” said Not-Lydia crisply, almost crossly, from the head of the stairs, “I can see they've gone. Who are you still talking to down there?”

“Come down,” he replied firmly, denying her a direct answer. “Whoever you are, we need to talk.” And down she came, wearing his bathrobe with nothing underneath. Nothing but her warm, intoxicating body. **Oh, would you knock it off already?** _Hey man, it's all you at this point. It just has to wear off on it's own._

Giles didn't have time to ask the demon exactly what it meant by that because at that moment, his door crashed inward. There she stood in all her radiant beauty and affronted dignity. The Slayer, Buffy Summers, hands on her hot little hips, head cocked dangerously to one side, Slayerettes behind her, almost in a proper wedge formation. “Alright,” she demanded, “Someone want to tell me what I'm doing here?”


	15. Love the Ones You're With

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow: Okay, I don't feel better now, and we've gotta help Buffy.  
> ~BtVS 2.5 "Reptile Boy"

'Oh my God, what's happening here?' Willow thought, or at least tried to think, clutching desperately at her own, honest confusion, trying to grope her way back towards sense from there. But there were so much nicer kinds of groping going on. Her skin sang at the caress of lips and tongues and fingers, not all of them his, but each of them just as wonderful, impossible as that had seemed mere moments ago.

Soon all thought became impossible. Touch. Taste. Smell. The vague lessor senses of sight and sound and motion. These made up the universe. A universe no bigger than the crisp cotton sheeted mattress on which five naked bodies moved and shifted, every female seeking to press herself against the male, who struggled to keep contact with them all, groaning with desire, longing for all of them equally.

At the moment Giles was on his side, thrusting inside Sheila who had one leg slung over him at the waist. The Watcher who wasn't one but might be a murderer was on her knees, cocked at an odd angle, clinging to the headboard with both hands, crying out in ecstasy as his mouth worked enthusiastically at the soft, wet, womanly flesh between her splayed thighs. Buffy was wrapped around him from behind, rubbing her naked pubis against his firm, bare ass, waiting impatiently for her turn to be fucked. Willow was at the top of the heap, humping against his hip in a way that caused her breasts to rub continually against Sheila's leg.

If Sheila minded that at all, she hadn't said so. She was too busy taking him hard and deep and fast, working up to what was probably her second orgasm from the sound of things, though things like sound and time and the separateness of people were getting a bit confusing, too much like thinking thoughts.

Willow found her hand traveling up Sheila's leg, caressing her thigh, grabbing for her butt. Finally, Sheila slapped it away with an emphatic grunt. That was all that was said and all that had to be. Willow's hand went limp for a moment for lack of anything on that side that was in-bounds to explore, until she found a place for it on Giles's shoulder, caressing taunt muscles that were wrapped firmly around Sheila's body, without touching the girl herself.

You might think she would be shocked at herself for even trying to touch Sheila that way, Willow supposed. But she wasn't. Or, well, not very much. She guessed it made sense, sort of. One man just wasn't enough to go round, that was all.

On the other side of Giles and of Willow, Buffy was whining with such pitiable desire that Willow longed to lend a helping hand to quiet her. She reached in that direction, but chickened out at the last moment.

Willow didn't know Buffy as well as she knew Sheila. But she knew what Buffy had thought of Giles for having sex with her that was no more under his control than any of this was, which meant that if she could keep from touching Buffy, she had to.

Her hand lighted instead on the lower, forward part of Rupert's ass, almost but not quite between his thighs. She rubbed her thumb against the back of his scrotum and her first two fingers against the pink, puckery ridges of his asshole. It might have been a coincidence that his garbled groans and mutterings of pleasure and disbelief intensified just at that very moment. And then again it might not.

Either way, it gave Willow a hint at something she could do. An intimate sex act evolving one part of his body that was not already in use. But to get a good angle for penetration, her arm would have to be pretty much exactly between Buffy's legs, making at least some degree of contact unavoidable.

Willow meant to tap Buffy on the shoulder. She really did. But the butterflies in her stomach were starting to feel like bats, beating their big, huge wings. Instead of tapping, she ghosted her fingers lightly along the other girl's arm. Buffy tossed back her long blonde hair and met Willow's steady gaze with eyes blazing like a hungry forest fire. Attention gotten.

Longing. Mutual longing that had everything and nothing to do with the smell and the taste of the man whose body they were tangled around. It only lasted a moment. A moment was all they could stand. They had to act.

And that was it. Buffy and Willow were kissing. Open mouths drinking each other in. Tongues dancing against each other, tasting, exploring.

Their arms were briefly entwined, each holding on to the bicep of the other, a curiously intimate bond, making them feel suddenly closer to one another than to any of the others. Even Giles. For a moment.

But really, this was all about him. And in another moment Willow was back on task. She brushed a finger against Buffy's lips and without a word, as if the scene had been scripted in advance, the Slayer opened her mouth and closed it around Willow's finger. As Willow slowly pulled her long, slender digit from her mouth, Buffy sucked at it teasingly, providing just enough resistance so that there was a delicious smacking sound as it popped free at last.

Willow carefully probed her lover's ass with her spit-slicked finger and found that it slid fairly easily inside. Again, it might have been a coincidence. There was an awful lot of sex going on with or without her finger sliding inside his ass. But that was the moment that Giles jerked and twitched and pulled his mouth free of the already coming woman at his head to cry out in the intensity of orgasm as his semen poured out into Sheila's body.

Buffy was crying out too, frenetically rubbing herself to orgasm against the arm that Willow had positioned between her legs in order to finger Giles. Willow was nearly ready to come herself. Her cunt was slick and dripping as it rubbed against the hot flesh of his calf, building to maddening tension, like a mousetrap dying to be sprung.

Then, suddenly, startlingly, Willow was flung onto her back. Her warm, fuzzy confusion sharpened to fear for half a beat before she felt Rupert's face between her thighs and not Not-Lydia's knife at her throat. He kissed her and mouthed her, lips to lips, rolling her clit against his tongue until she came and came again, spurting an amazing amount of a thin clear fluid for which she knew no name, only that it didn't smell like urine.

Somewhere in the dim distance, at the other end of the bed, Buffy and the older blond woman were taking uneven turns sucking Rupert's cock, pushing and shoving for the privilege of hardening him enough to penetrate her so soon after coming inside Sheila. Meanwhile, Sheila sprawled on the floor, happy and satisfied.

Willow got her chance to be fucked. After Buffy as it turned out. Who could push and shove harder than any mere mortal woman. So hard, in fact, that she mostly didn't have to at all. But before Gwendolyn. Who really was a murderer, and hardly even ashamed to say so, once everyone had caught their breath enough to say anything.

Unlike Sheila, Willow got to ride on top of Giles, looking down at him face to face. Dipping her head once in a great while to steal his kisses, grinning. Weird as the whole situation was, torn up as she had originally felt at the thought of Giles making love or even lust to Sheila, in those few brief minutes (okay, a lot of minutes) of sexual union with him; she felt every single kind of right. Exited. Stimulated. Euphoric. Comforted. Sheltered. Loved. Supported. Vindicated. Appreciated. Calm. At peace. If the entire universe could be made up of those minutes, it would have been a perfect world.

Which it wasn't. As Willow could easily tell by the shouting, foot stamping, crying, accusing, demanding, sneering, sniping minutes she was living through right now.

“I need another drink!” Rupert declared dramatically.

“Oh sure,” Buffy rejoined, “that's your answer to everything!” This from all of her seconds of experience with him. As he made sure to point out. To no one's advantage. Somehow or other, they both managed to offend Sheila, at least from what Willow could gather above Gwendolyn's snarky yet not at all witty commentary. The Watcher-Killer seemed like she'd had more than one drink herself.

Willow had had enough. She picked up a heavy book from one of the night stands and banged it hard against a brass bedpost, making it ring like a gong.

“Alright, People!” She declared in a loud, firm, authoritative voice. “Nobody wants this to be happening. We've established that. Some of us don't like others of us and some of us like each other more than we want to. We've established that too. Well guess what; we're suck with each other. All five of us. With interest. Now it's getting late, and some of us have school in the morning. So unless anyone as any new business to discuss, this might be a good time for a motion to adjourn."


End file.
